hankman86

Java Web Start always seemed like a lazy approach to bring legacy desktop apps into the web. Something you would associate with enterprise software, where end user experience apparently does not matter. I remember lengthy downloads of jar files, where eventually, some desktop window using very 1990s-looking Swing widgets would pop out. Not to mention that you needed to download a JRE (don’t remember if this was automatic on first launch).

Even in the heydays of Java, desktop applications were never all that great. I remember how painfully slow Eclipse ran. And when I tried the WebStorm IDE a few years back, all the same problems still existed re memory management and some pronounced latency pressing a key and having the character appear on screen. WebStorm was also infamous for its code indexing runs, which pretty much froze my computer for a number of minutes. Not sure if that’s a Java problem though.

People criticise Electron, but honestly: applications like Slack, Spotify and VS Code run much better than the Java-based desktop apps that I got to use.

Some JavaScript engines used to (or maybe still do) detect asm.js compliant code and then AOT-compiled it into machine instructions. You could theoretically write asm.js code by hand. But that would have been error prone and laborious. For all intents and purposes, one would transpile a native code base into asm.js using the likes of Emscripten.

There used to be a SIMD.js proposal, which was AFAIK abandoned in favor of WebAssembly SIMD. Google’s proprietary Native Client also added limited SIMD support as its last hooray.

I personally think the way to go is to improve the interoperability between JavaScript and WebAssembly instead of continuing to pursue low-level pattern like asm.js and SIMD in JavaScript. And let’s face it. For any larger code base, JavaScript is a mere deployment format, not the language you code your project in. I am still hoping for a future version of Typescript that can compile into WebAssembly.

It is not entirely clear from the article, but apparently, they still use Java for their calculation engine. And then transpile it into JavaScript. Which makes me wonder whether instead of porting this code base to WasmGC, a partial rewrite would have helped the project’s maintain ability in the long run. Rust seems like a potentially good candidate due to its existing WebAssembly backend.

WasmGC is useful for many other projects of course. But I wonder how painful it is to maintain a Java code base, which is not a great choice for client-side web apps to begin with. I remember using GWT back in the days - and that never felt like a good fit. GWT supported a whitelisted subset of the Java standard library. But the emitted Javascript code was nigh on impossible read. I don’t remember if Chrome’s developer tools already had source map support back in those days. But I doubt it. Other core Java concepts like class loaders are equally unsuited for JavaScript. Not to mention that primitive data types are different in Java and JavaScript. The same is true for collections, where many popular Java classes do not have direct counterparts in JavaScript.

I wonder if the rules of continuous improvement apply to ML models. It seems that regressions are very easy to pick up. And that with a complex task like FSD it is virtually impossible to use the established tools to safeguard the stack from regressions (i.e. test cases that assert some unbroken functionality).

They should teach Tesla’s “autopilot” (and its FSD upgrade) in business schools. Turns out you can sustainably push up company valuation on vapourware. You have to wonder if Tesla’s autonomous driving technology was actually ever meant to turn into a product. Or whether it is mostly a tool to justify the lofty Tesla stock price. I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors.

What is the adoption for passkeys? I do not get the impression that they will replace passwords or “social” logins anytime soon.

Companies like 1Password must be having a bad day. They have previously been held back by Apple, resulting in a poor user experience on iOS. And now Cupertino is entering into direct competition. Let’s see if Apple reaches feature parity and in particular, actually offers decent cross-platform support.

His personality aside, Tesla shareholders might come to the conclusion that he has made a number of bad decisions that hurt the company’s prospects.

To name a few: the Cybertruck (not being in the pickup truck market per se, but the product decisions that Musk made), axing the Model 2 and leaving the small car market to the competition, the Tesla Semi which is vapourware while competitors actually sell electric commercial trucks, the failure to bring self-driving cars to market (but selling them anyway, killing people in the process), the failure to develop batteries that are competitive with what BYD and CATL have, the failure to renew its small lineup of aging models, stupid side shows like these Tesla robots etc.

Thus far, Tesla’s rapid growth and its great profit margin were reason enough to ignore all of the aforementioned. That’s no longer the case. Tesla shareholders should oust Musk, giving him more time to be a full-time Twitter troll.

The reason for why these are so cheap in China is cutthroat competition that sees manufacturers selling their cars at a loss. Chinese manufacturers are basically cleaning the slate in the domestic EV market.

If true, then why is he still the CEO? Lying to the board is a big red flag. In particular when it is withholding material information.

The whole OpenAI company structure is suspect to say the least. Having a dishonest person at the helm does not help.

Maybe volunteering for this procedure makes the patient get prioritised for a human kidney transplant?

Ethics aside, wouldn’t chimpanzees or bonobos be more suitable donors for a kidney?

Investors are waking up to the fact that they are investing into a car manufacturer, not a software stock.

Also, their EV-only strategy makes them vulnerable to the slower than expected uptake of electric vehicles in many markets. Lastly, it is difficult to see Tesla maintaining a technical edge. Other manufacturers have shown to be able to produce electric drivetrains. And Tesla’s full self driving technology is difficult to assess. They sure did make a lot of noise, making it look like they are ahead of everyone else. Whether that’s the case is anyone’s guess - most likely it is not.

What makes you say that? An EV is more than the drivetrain (where Tesla’s are said to be more efficient). EVs from other manufacturers have batter suspension, noise insulation, steering etc.

Have never seen their infotainment system. My BMW i4 has CarPlay - what else would I want?

Poor usability and the generally spartan interior are the reasons why I did not even look at Tesla and ordered a BMW i4 instead. Sadly, they too have moved functions like the aircon into the touch screen.

But at least you still get a driver dash with head up display, proper indicator stalks, real leather seats and quality materials throughout.

Agree. Mazda has the best design among Japanese carmakers. They will probably end up as a sub brand of some Chinese EV maker.

Here in Australia, News Corp (owned by the same Murdoch family who is also behind Fox News) is currently running a campaign against agricultural solar. A key “argument” being that installing solar panels on fields makes it impossible to grow crops there.

Makes me wonder whether we will eventually see dedicated hardware acceleration for common server tasks such as JSON parsing.

Only if sensible people continue to run the public health authorities.

You now have people that refuse to vaccinate their children against measles, COVID vaccine hesitancy is a widespread phenomenon with some people resorting to heresay remedies like horse dewormers instead, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is running for US president and polling with double digit numbers.

Health-related insights are particularly susceptible to targeted misinformation. And in an era of social media, this can quickly become a majority opinion.

Australian here. We recently had a kitchen bench top made from engineered stone installed. I was previously entirely oblivious to the risks involved. Suffice it to say that we would have chosen a different material had I known the health burden of inhaling the dust during preparation/cutting.

The contractor who installed the bench top for us was however very diligent in alerting us to what safety measures we should follow should any on-site cutting be required at our place. Which it wasn’t in the end. So at least he was aware that the sawdust is a major health hazard.

But that’s one contractor, which does not represent an entire industry. Engineered stone is fashionable and I imagine there are many black sheep out there doing it for cheap with under-trained or unsupervised personnel.

Exactly, on the slow processors of the day, the Turbo Pascal compiler absolutely sprinted through the code.

A far cry from today’s complex build systems that take forever to compile a program which can do exactly the same thing.

Turbo Pascal is what got me into programming. I remember spending hundreds of German marks on a license for Borland Pascal 7.0 and later Delphi 1.0 and 2.0. I ended up developing my first “commercial” software that I sold for money.

In the DOS era, Turbo Pascal was probably the easiest way to get into programming, outside of Basic. And on Windows 3.1/95, Delphi was eye-opening how easy GUI programming could be.

In many ways, I feel like we have gone backwards from there. How was it possible for the Turbo Pascal / Delphi compiler to produce a small binary for a fully-featured GUI program when today similarly powerful software is orders of magnitude larger in size?

Nobody except SpaceX has developed reusable rocket stages, including other US-based aerospace companies. And it is very unclear how much SpaceX really saves in launch costs.

The US government keeps funding SpaceX through a number military and civilian contracts. Not to mention the in kind support that SpaceX receives from NASA. Arianespace does not get as many publicly funded contracts that would pay for expensive R&D programs.

Also, nobody outside of SpaceX really knows how much their reusable first stages really saves them. That’s especially true for the Falcon Heavy (which is comparable to the Ariane 6) where the center stage does not / cannot be reused.

It is the default choice nowadays. Most people on the Internet are not emotionally invested in whose browser they are using. They just want to use a browser that works on every site.

Google is so reliant on ads, they will probably push through with this. More ads in search, YouTube, GMail and the wider Web is the only way for them to grow revenue. More other Google businesses are small fish compared to their ad revenue.

Let’s hope that other browser makers use this opportunity to attack. Chrome’s dominant market share is unhealthy for the Internet anyway.

Exactly. Being able to effectively block ads is a highly desirable feature. All it takes is a well-funded marketing campaign that educates users when Google stops supporting MV2 extensions.

Microsoft 365.

That’s actually a meaningful way for other browser makers to differentiate themselves. Notably Firefox, but potentially also Microsoft Edge. While Edge is based on Chrome, they could decide to keep supporting manifest V2 extensions.

From an end user‘s personal, YouTube‘s ad block detector is unwanted malware, running on hardware that YouTube does not own.

If there is no law against that, then there should be. Let’s face it, the advertising and data harvesting revenue model of the Web has done so much damage, it deserves to be dismantled. If need be through legal enforcement.