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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

The focus on driving WASM performance in the browser platforms, combined with the ability to transpile more languages to WASM, pushes the barrier-to-entry lower. Yes, these concerns aren't specific to WASM, but the platform is being made more capable of hosting this kind of troubling code, and more attractive to developers who would develop these things.

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Compiling C++ or Rust to use in a web page is much more complicated than just writing Javascript. I can't see how that lowers the barrier to entry. Your argument seems to be that you can do more with those platforms because they're more performant, which yeah, to a point I guess, but Javascript is already plenty fast for making whatever obnoxious dreams people want to come true and the web seems to have survived it fine.

If you compile C++ or Rust to native targets anyway, I fail to see how it's more complicated.

I don't think the barrier to entry or ease of development is really the issue when we're talking about ad networks.

Ad networks, no-- I agree with that. I'm more concerned about entire websites becoming "apps", complete with browser-in-a-browser functionality (with the inner browser's behavior being completely under the control of the site operator).

It would be an interesting experiment to transpile a less complex browser, like Arachne, over to WASM as a proof of concept to demonstrate how awful this kind of future would be. (Yet another "if I had some free time" wishes... >sigh<)

> It would be an interesting experiment to transpile a less complex browser, like Arachne, over to WASM as a proof of concept to demonstrate how awful this kind of future would be. (Yet another "if I had some free time" wishes... >sigh<)

Don't. Most people will ignore the demonstration, but someone greedy will fork the project, build a library out of it, and start selling as a product to ad networks and media companies.

I agree. Somebody is going to open that Pandora's box, though. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person who is concerned. I think it's an eventuality, however. Few young developers today have had to deal with walled gardens and don't understand how bad they are. Worse, today's platforms give an unprecedented amount of control to the platform owner to the detriment of the hardware's actual owner, and developers seem more than willing to help create those mechanisms of control. What's going to happen when nobody is left who actually owns their own computer?

Yup. That's what I'm worried about.

And people growing up with today web-first, mobile-first computing model have no clue of the power and capabilities computers have. With data being owned and hidden by apps/webapps, limited interoperability, nonexistent shortcuts, little to no means of automation of tasks, people won't even be able to conceive new ways to use their machines, because the tools for that aren't available.

You just gave me a horrible vision of a robotic hand perched over a smartphone screen being programmed to touch the screen to "automate" tasks because nobody will know any better. (Of course that would never work because our smartphones have front-facing cameras and software to detect faces and verify that we're alive... >sigh<)

Yeah, this is the input equivalent of the analog loophole :).

Now ordinarily, on PCs, you do that by means of simulated keypresses and mouseclicks, using scripting capabilities of the OS or end-user software like AutoHotkey. In the web/mobile-first, corporate-sandboxed reality, I can't imagine this capability being available, so Arduino and robot hand it is.

(But yeah, bastards will eventually put a front-facing depth-sensing camera, constantly verifying the user, arguing that it's for "security" reasons.)

Ad networks are the next Macromedia.

That is certainly not true. The knowledge base you need to even start compiling to WASM is far greater than just JS.

I think it's reasonable to assume that there will be many efforts to create tools and libraries that make it easier. It will become less difficult with each passing day.

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