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triangleman

This guy is trying to emulate x86 in the browser and run the actual Flash player within that:

https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-...

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Here is 'this guy' :-). Feel free to drop any question on Twitter. https://twitter.com/alexpignotti

Hello! Big props for doing that!

Is any of this open source?

https://github.com/lightspark/lightspark

Not at this stage, this may chance as the business evolves

Just posted a new article about our tech, first demo of x86 python running in the browser is included (scroll to the bottom): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538856

From the post:

    > The Flash plugin itself includes a JIT compiler that 
    > converts AS3 code to x86 code on the fly, which is then JIT 
    > compiled by CheerpX into WebAssembly.

And of course, the WebAssembly is then JIT compiled right back to x86, so it's actually three levels of JIT compilation. It's a wonder this runs with any acceptable performance at all.

I'm looking forward to seeing this as a dependency of any future Electron app too; Moore's law must be brought to use.

Some x86s further JIT compile x86 instructions to micro-operations.

(That isn’t normally called JITting, but I think one can view it as such, especially when the CPU caches the translation, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBurst_(microarchitecture)#E... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache#UOP-CACHE)

> actually three levels of JIT compilation.

And that’s totally fine to support legacy code.

After all, it continues to put some tiny pixels on a screen, emit some light and gets interpreted by some huge neural networks that took decades to train and finally releases a small shot of endorphins.

Why not just start with the endorphins?

Replace Flash player with little USB-powered opium dispensers?

To be clear, I think this is an amazing project and I very much appreciate this effort to preserve legacy software. When I say it is a wonder that this runs with acceptable performance, that's also to be taken as a compliment to the developers. :)

The moment app developers manage to do that we are going to see some crazy marketing wars

Here's a talk by the team as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JUs4c99-mo

And their website: https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpx.html

This is honestly one of the coolest things I've seen, and given the amount of Flex/Spark software for enterprise out there, it could drastically change the legacy software landscape.

It really sounds awesome, but I can't just download it and play with it.

I hope they release something usable that I can just download and play around with. I'm not a huge company which will create something really amazing and can pay royalties to them, I guess I am not interesting

Today I've seen win95 emulated on browser on x86 - is it the same library? I don't have link handy but if win95 runs fine then flash should as well.

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