I've gotten to the point I hate reading about any updates to Chrome. It's a monoculture, and Google are serving themselves.
This release has some really cool WASM stuff, but at the same time this post hit the front page, it sits beside other posts about Mozilla shuttering projects.
The DOJ needs to bar Google from having a browser or any say in browser technology. These people are ruining our web.
Google is slowly turning the web into WeChat. It's horrifying to watch it unfold. Approved bundles, no URLs, everything hosted on AMP, and deeply embedded ads. We're about to lose one of the most free and democratic technologies forever. All so that Google can enrich itself.
Yes. Microsoft wasn't automatically bad for the web because they were dominant. They were bad because they were a closed process, and soon after they won the browser wars they closed the Internet Explorer team, allowing no further progress to be made.
Without the Mozilla team creating a credible, Windows-based rival, and subsequently Google creating Chrome, the Web would look really different today.
Sure, if you want to make a simple personal web page, it will probably work in other browsers.
Meanwhile we have government and banking websites that say "This browser is unsupported" when viewed with any browser other than Chrome. These are essential services forcing us to consolidate under Google.
Many websites break as Firefox and Safari add new privacy protections. The websites don't care: if they can't track you then they often don't want you viewing their content anyway. In some cases they'd rather things break so that Mozilla and Apple reconsider their efforts toward privacy.
The other comment mentions that we survived MSFT, so everything will be fine. This is naive. When IE6 had a monopoly Microsoft let it stagnate. The web basically didn't change for ten years; sure there were new standards but nobody could use them because they wouldn't work in IE6. It also wasn't nearly as complicated as it is today, so it was possible for other browsers to catch up.
Google today is doing the opposite. They are steering the web in all sorts of new directions massively increasing its complexity, and they are forcing automatic updates everywhere to make sure IE6 doesn't happen. All of this means it's next to impossible for other browser vendors to keep up. Microsoft has already given up and adopted Blink. How long do you think Apple will hold out? How long do you think Google will keep bankrolling Mozilla?
>All of this means it's next to impossible for other browser vendors to keep up
So your solution seems to be hobble the successful company so the weaker companies can compete? Maybe we should also prevent strong athletes from using their strengths and skills because other people don't have the same strengths and skills? Should we prevent smart people from using the brains because some people's brains don't function as well?
Maybe there's a different argument against Chrome but Google adding features to the Chrome is certainly not an argument against Chrome.
I am not the OP of this thread; I suggested no solution.
However, if you'll permit me to suggest one, I don't think getting the government involved is a bad idea at all. Google is financially successful not because of their browser but because of tracking-based advertising, a largely unrelated market. They use that funnel of cash to expand into a separate market, that of the browser, in order to cement their position of power in web advertising. This sort of anti-competitive behaviour is exactly why antitrust regulations exist.
Your "Harrison Bergeron" allusion is almost a total non-sequitor. Nobody suggested hobbling Google because of their success. It's because of the damage they are doing to the web. The OP gave many examples of this that you seem to have ignored.
Chrome being open source is a massive difference compared to IE. Especially with both Microsoft and Apple maintaining their own Blink/Webkit based browsers in addition to Google.
I do hope Firefox survives. I think it's really important for the web to have multiple implementations. But lets not pretend this is as bad as the IE situation.
How does Android and ChromeOS being open source contribute to anyone wanting to create their competing platforms, and how much uptake have they gotten from mainstream users so far?
A lot. LineageOS, Amazon's Fire OS, OnePlus' OxygenOS, Android emulation layers and so on are only possible because Android is open source. It sets a low ceiling for any anticompetitive practices Google may want to pull off.
Nobody seems to really care too much about ChromeOS niche.
Mainstream users don't care about any of this and just want things to work. Open source allows other people to take something in a better direction when the original project stops "just working".
Another reminder to check out WebAssembly. Both updates in the release notes about WebAssembly sound very promising. One is getting towards complete parity with native code, and the other is reduced overhead when interfacing with JS.
Right. The actual reason you see all the big companies loving WebAssembly is that now you can fully have cross-platform black-box DRM binaries running on every browser. But of course what could possibly go wrong?
It is another Adobe® Flash® that is controlled by the big tech companies rather than just one.
We already have black box DRM binaries in browsers. That battle is lost.
WebAssembly is not another Flash. It might allow someone to create something that resembles Flash, but WebAssembly itself is not. You might as well criticise C because people can write DRM with it.
One point that I don't seem to hear a lot: You can still block ads on YouTube in the browser, but you can't in the mobile app. The difference is that in the browser you can open the page and inspect everything that it consists of. In the app everything is bytecode. The solution of stripping ads from the YouTube app is to maintain a hacked version and follow a convoluted multi-step process to root your device and disable signature verification just to be able to install it. What will the solution be when webpages bundle both the content and advertisements into inseparable binary black boxes?
I think the population that consumes YouTube in general is much larger than the population that consumes paid content with DRM, and there would be a much larger pushback if webpages like YouTube started to be distributed in compiled format.
Ad blockers don’t work by inspecting the source code of YouTube’s JS and modifying it. Instead they inspect the network requests being sent, cookies being stored, elements being created and with which styles, and so on.
This is awesome thank you for some reason last year my daughters school still needed a flash player for a typing program going to try this to see if works thanks!
Webasm doesn't help much with drm since you can reverse engineer it just like any code. It doesn't have any privileged access to allow tricks like using a key stored in hardware (and other drm does).
It does allow blackbox libraries. So does compiling to JavaScript though. Really it just means that the black box binaries are (even) faster than the white box scripts.
I always thought webassembly would be great that you can write rich guis in languages like Python or Java, but instead its mostly low level with Rust and C++ having momentum. Is it just not ready yet? or do I misunderstand the goals.
Treating any context of master slave as being discriminatory or "disrespectful", is discriminatory to consensual BDSM and continues the trend of suppressing and attacking that minority group.
I'd say that doesn't really apply though because not only is consensual BDSM invisible as a minority classification, it actively tries to remain hidden in public. It is inappropriate to display such things to people who haven't consented to being shown them. That's why you don't wear a gimp suit to go grocery shopping, the other patrons haven't consented to being part of that scene. So if anything someone who engages in BDSM would be very much offended see master/slave used casually in a public setting.
Patient or not, it isn't true. Even in a small semi-rural town, I saw a dominant/submissive family at the grocery store where one of them wore pretty revealing clothing with a t-shirt that said she was "collared and loved". To me, they looked like a very happy, if unconventional, couple.
>> It is inappropriate to display such things [...]
You're displaying the words BDSM in public on this very forum to people who haven't consented to it. That's innapropriate and we have to create a policy that respects those who don't want to see that.
~My point is when you take entire words, regardless of their context and outlaw them you're inherently suppressing that words representation of groups that use it in different contexts. There is no reason to wholey remove the terms master and slave unless the words are wholey wrong to use, which would then mean that BDSM surely is as well. Either you take all of it as being wrong or accept that words have context.
You know... as soon as I wrote "I don't think anyone" I thought to myself... well surely some single individual somewhere probably actually has... and someone will find it for me.
Better not use a debit card with an 'oppressive' Mastercard logo on it. /s
Which means Monzo, Apple, Starling, N26 and Revolut are all 'complicit' with working with Mastercard to continue to oppress the offended. Time for a rename. /s
When did words become forbidden? I heard recently that someone lost their job because the used the N word in a purely illustrative manner, of words that are forbidden, not as an insult. I think it was a Netflix exec, but I may be mistaken. edit yes it was: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44585072
I don't understand how the words master or slave are offensive to anyone in a computer context. People need to grow the fuck up and stop getting so butt hurt over stupid little words and microagressions. There are real problems out there in the world, go find one and do something about it and stop being a little bitch cry baby.
> There are real problems out there in the world, go find one and do something about it and stop being a little bitch cry baby.
it's all about posturing and signaling, and being a crook.
yes, there are real problems that stem from corporations and society's heavy efforts to divide and capitalize on us. however, it's far more difficult and low-roi to actually fight racism or do anything productive, whereas you get most of the benefits by acting like you care and banning a couple words and saying it's bad!
Exactly. It is virtue signalling at its finest and it does absolutely nothing to address the actual concern or create anything substantiative.
> The v8.6 version makes the V8 code base more respectful. The team joined a Chromium-wide effort to follow Google’s commitments to racial equity by replacing some insensitive terms in the project.
The 'decisions' of the Chromium team never cease to be so illogical. If they complain about upstreaming another OS like the BSDs (Because they're a minority of users and its vewy vewy 'hard' to maintain) [0] but happily rename words in the entire Chromium codebase to appeal to a minority of actually 'offended' people of the sake of so-called 'inclusivity', then I'm afraid they have just defied any sense of logic and reason.
This is the hill they want to die on.
> This is still an ongoing effort and any external contributor is welcome to give a hand! You can see the list of still available tasks here.
> People need to grow the fuck up and stop getting so butt hurt over stupid little words
And yet here you are, emotionally reacting to the words people choose to use!
OK, you don’t see the offence. Fair enough. Are you the descendent of a slave? Have you spoken to others who are to gauge their thoughts? I’m not personally offended by it either but I’m willing to believe others are. And what the hell difference does it actually make to me if I’m merging to “main” instead of “master”? It’s fewer characters for one, and probably easier to explain to beginners.
What I saw in the V8 post was a simple, straightforward statement about a small change they made. And then I saw your comment.
A right? No. But you also don’t have a right to offend coworkers. I guess some companies consider not being offended to be a perk of employment with them. The free market can decide: if people value the perk they’ll work there. If they don’t, they’ll quit.
Hey, please make your substantive points thoughtfully and drop the name-calling and flamebait. You owe the community better if you're posting here—plus it's in your interest not to discredit your own position that way.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadThis release has some really cool WASM stuff, but at the same time this post hit the front page, it sits beside other posts about Mozilla shuttering projects.
The DOJ needs to bar Google from having a browser or any say in browser technology. These people are ruining our web.
Google is slowly turning the web into WeChat. It's horrifying to watch it unfold. Approved bundles, no URLs, everything hosted on AMP, and deeply embedded ads. We're about to lose one of the most free and democratic technologies forever. All so that Google can enrich itself.
Without the Mozilla team creating a credible, Windows-based rival, and subsequently Google creating Chrome, the Web would look really different today.
I'm sorry, but how exactly is anything in Chrome stopping that?
Meanwhile we have government and banking websites that say "This browser is unsupported" when viewed with any browser other than Chrome. These are essential services forcing us to consolidate under Google.
Many websites break as Firefox and Safari add new privacy protections. The websites don't care: if they can't track you then they often don't want you viewing their content anyway. In some cases they'd rather things break so that Mozilla and Apple reconsider their efforts toward privacy.
The other comment mentions that we survived MSFT, so everything will be fine. This is naive. When IE6 had a monopoly Microsoft let it stagnate. The web basically didn't change for ten years; sure there were new standards but nobody could use them because they wouldn't work in IE6. It also wasn't nearly as complicated as it is today, so it was possible for other browsers to catch up.
Google today is doing the opposite. They are steering the web in all sorts of new directions massively increasing its complexity, and they are forcing automatic updates everywhere to make sure IE6 doesn't happen. All of this means it's next to impossible for other browser vendors to keep up. Microsoft has already given up and adopted Blink. How long do you think Apple will hold out? How long do you think Google will keep bankrolling Mozilla?
So your solution seems to be hobble the successful company so the weaker companies can compete? Maybe we should also prevent strong athletes from using their strengths and skills because other people don't have the same strengths and skills? Should we prevent smart people from using the brains because some people's brains don't function as well?
Maybe there's a different argument against Chrome but Google adding features to the Chrome is certainly not an argument against Chrome.
However, if you'll permit me to suggest one, I don't think getting the government involved is a bad idea at all. Google is financially successful not because of their browser but because of tracking-based advertising, a largely unrelated market. They use that funnel of cash to expand into a separate market, that of the browser, in order to cement their position of power in web advertising. This sort of anti-competitive behaviour is exactly why antitrust regulations exist.
Your "Harrison Bergeron" allusion is almost a total non-sequitor. Nobody suggested hobbling Google because of their success. It's because of the damage they are doing to the web. The OP gave many examples of this that you seem to have ignored.
I saw no examples of Google's evil from the OP
> Approved bundles,
what is this?
> no URLs,
This is from Apple, not Google. Chrome is just following what Safari has been doing for years.
> everything hosted on AMP
Arguable either way
> and deeply embedded ads.
not sure what this or how it's evil
Happy to be enlightened
I do hope Firefox survives. I think it's really important for the web to have multiple implementations. But lets not pretend this is as bad as the IE situation.
Nobody seems to really care too much about ChromeOS niche.
Mainstream users don't care about any of this and just want things to work. Open source allows other people to take something in a better direction when the original project stops "just working".
I looked around the web and found this:
https://github.com/appcypher/awesome-wasm-langs
...which led me to this:
https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript
Its description is awesome: "Definitely not a TypeScript to WebAssembly compiler :rocket:"
The thing that makes me most not want to miss the boat on WebAssembly so far is that Figma uses it (with C++):
https://madewithwebassembly.com/showcase/figma/
https://platform.uno/
https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpx.html
Right. The actual reason you see all the big companies loving WebAssembly is that now you can fully have cross-platform black-box DRM binaries running on every browser. But of course what could possibly go wrong?
It is another Adobe® Flash® that is controlled by the big tech companies rather than just one.
WebAssembly is not another Flash. It might allow someone to create something that resembles Flash, but WebAssembly itself is not. You might as well criticise C because people can write DRM with it.
It’s not a tiny difference, and skepticism is not necessarily unfounded.
I think the population that consumes YouTube in general is much larger than the population that consumes paid content with DRM, and there would be a much larger pushback if webpages like YouTube started to be distributed in compiled format.
WebAssembly changes none of those things.
Ruffle [0] is written in rust, compiles to webassembly, and already can play a reasonably sized subset of flash correctly at their intended speed.
[0]: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle
It does allow blackbox libraries. So does compiling to JavaScript though. Really it just means that the black box binaries are (even) faster than the white box scripts.
I'd say that doesn't really apply though because not only is consensual BDSM invisible as a minority classification, it actively tries to remain hidden in public. It is inappropriate to display such things to people who haven't consented to being shown them. That's why you don't wear a gimp suit to go grocery shopping, the other patrons haven't consented to being part of that scene. So if anything someone who engages in BDSM would be very much offended see master/slave used casually in a public setting.
>> It is inappropriate to display such things [...]
Heh, "inappropriate" is such a slippery word.
~My point is when you take entire words, regardless of their context and outlaw them you're inherently suppressing that words representation of groups that use it in different contexts. There is no reason to wholey remove the terms master and slave unless the words are wholey wrong to use, which would then mean that BDSM surely is as well. Either you take all of it as being wrong or accept that words have context.
It's only when used in the separate sense specifically opposite "slave".
There's no need to caricature or misrepresent the POV that you obviously disagree with here.
you clearly missed https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312
So thanks. ;)
Countering slavery is hard. Let's go renaming!
Which means Monzo, Apple, Starling, N26 and Revolut are all 'complicit' with working with Mastercard to continue to oppress the offended. Time for a rename. /s
I don't understand how the words master or slave are offensive to anyone in a computer context. People need to grow the fuck up and stop getting so butt hurt over stupid little words and microagressions. There are real problems out there in the world, go find one and do something about it and stop being a little bitch cry baby.
it's all about posturing and signaling, and being a crook.
yes, there are real problems that stem from corporations and society's heavy efforts to divide and capitalize on us. however, it's far more difficult and low-roi to actually fight racism or do anything productive, whereas you get most of the benefits by acting like you care and banning a couple words and saying it's bad!
> The v8.6 version makes the V8 code base more respectful. The team joined a Chromium-wide effort to follow Google’s commitments to racial equity by replacing some insensitive terms in the project.
The 'decisions' of the Chromium team never cease to be so illogical. If they complain about upstreaming another OS like the BSDs (Because they're a minority of users and its vewy vewy 'hard' to maintain) [0] but happily rename words in the entire Chromium codebase to appeal to a minority of actually 'offended' people of the sake of so-called 'inclusivity', then I'm afraid they have just defied any sense of logic and reason.
This is the hill they want to die on.
> This is still an ongoing effort and any external contributor is welcome to give a hand! You can see the list of still available tasks here.
An ongoing senseless wasted effort.
[0] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/...
And yet here you are, emotionally reacting to the words people choose to use!
OK, you don’t see the offence. Fair enough. Are you the descendent of a slave? Have you spoken to others who are to gauge their thoughts? I’m not personally offended by it either but I’m willing to believe others are. And what the hell difference does it actually make to me if I’m merging to “main” instead of “master”? It’s fewer characters for one, and probably easier to explain to beginners.
What I saw in the V8 post was a simple, straightforward statement about a small change they made. And then I saw your comment.
> stop being a little bitch cry baby
Quite.
What a waste of developer time to be renaming code symbols because they offend somebody. You don't have a right not to be offended.
A right? No. But you also don’t have a right to offend coworkers. I guess some companies consider not being offended to be a perk of employment with them. The free market can decide: if people value the perk they’ll work there. If they don’t, they’ll quit.
I also saw this:
> The team joined a Chromium-wide effort to follow Google’s commitments to racial equity by replacing some insensitive terms in the project.
So this affects the entire Chromium code base. Not just V8.
As for their 'diversity progress' according to their 2020 report, it has made quite frankly, little to close to no change as a whole. [0]
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ruthumoh/2020/05/05/google-dive...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html