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0 pointsJohnFen6y ago0 comments

The threat of WebAssembly is that it may encourage more sites to require users to allow client-side code execution to work. For those of us who aren't trusting enough to allow this, it means that the web gets smaller even faster than it already is.

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thekyle6y ago

It seems like if you replace WebAssembly with JavaScript in this comment it makes just as much sense. What is different about WebAssembly?

JohnFenOP6y ago

WebAssembly expands on the ability to do client-side stuff and makes it more accessible, so my fear is that it will make it more common.

That's pretty much the entire difference. It's a difference of degree more than of kind. As I said, Javascript is making much of the web inaccessible to me, and WebAssembly, if it becomes popular, will only accelerate this loss.

ficklepickle6y ago

I wonder how feasible a rendering proxy would be. It would run the JS in a simulated browser environment and return the HTML.

Interactivity would be tricky, but static HTML is better than a blank page.

Edit: Found something very similar, but it targets legacy browsers using clickable image maps rather than privacy/security.

https://github.com/tenox7/wrp

kevingadd6y ago

WebAssembly adds new functionality to the browser runtime environment that isn't available to regular JavaScript. It was originally 1:1 with asm.js/JS but that stopped being true relatively quick.

notriddle6y ago

It's faster. That's literally it. There aren't any new I/O facilities.

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adrr6y ago

WebAssembly allows allocation of memory and exposes a huge threat surface. We can't even protect the current APIs and these are being exploited by sovereign nations to oppress people like the Uyghurs. How about we focus on making the sandboxes stronger instead of building out things like WebGL and WebAssembly.

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