Progress Being Made On New "WebGPU" Web Graphics API

[KellyClowers]

But my point is the purpose of imperial units was so you could measure them without proper tools to do so.

Too bad they do an absolute shit job of that, just like they do a shit job being a sane measuring system in general.

[schmidtbag]

As an American, kindly shut the fuck up.

That doesn't make sense... As someone whose location is irrelevant, I request with ill-intent that you shut the fuck up, seeing as you haven't contributed anything of value to the conversation. Maybe if you paid attention, you'd realize that I also want metric being used.

Whether other countries are 100% metric is irrelevant here. They are totally in the right to roast us for not converting from our stone-age nonsense.

They are right that non-metric units need to be ditched. They are right to criticize the US for using non-metric units. But no matter how right they are, their demands and complaints are hypocritical, and petty in most cases (since some of the whining doesn't affect their personal lives at all).

Too bad they do an absolute shit job of that, just like they do a shit job being a sane measuring system in general.

Yup, pretty much.

[starshipeleven]

Yup pretty much. Doesn't change my point though - so far, I have yet to encounter a country that is 100% metric, and yet I encounter non-US citizens who whine about the US not using metric.

The fact that the country isn't 100% metric is just because the migration has to be slow but is in fact ongoing.
Pretty much everyone has officially adopted the metric system, and "officially adopted" has legal value, as older units are removed from official documents and slowly phased out.
Therefore any complaint about special snowflakes requiring special treatment is not hypocritical.


(nations by date of official adoption of metric system, beige ones were already officially metric when they became independent, black ones are the special snowflakes)

[starshipeleven]

as a foreigner, how often does the US using non-metric units impact you?

English is used by many countries as a cross-country language, and people looking for documentation, manuals and whatever (not necessarily official stuff, I mean blogs, youtube videos and whatever, cooking recipes and even games) will likely search and find more stuff in english than in their own language.

This is also true for most media, English stuff is more common and higher quality than average local stuff.

Why you think so many people learn english in the first place? It's not to chat with native US morons in forums like this, it's because information in their local languages is outdated, badly translated, or simply not profitable enough to translate at all.

And much like everything else computerized, it takes absolutely no effort to convert to what the rest of the world uses.

More like US citizens live in their own "island" and don't need to interact with outside much, so they don't need to ever convert their units around, so they don't know how fun is to stop reading/watching/playing to convert some unit on Google.

Then eventually you start knowing both systems enough, but it's still stupid shit that I need to learn 2 systems of measurements because a single nation decides to be an ass and not adopt everyone else's standards.

And really, I couldn't give a fuck if Burkina Faso or any other random African nation decides to do its own thing, as they have nothing of interest for me.

[schmidtbag]

The fact that the country isn't 100% metric is just because the migration has to be slow but is in fact ongoing.
Pretty much everyone has officially adopted the metric system, and "officially adopted" has legal value, as older units are removed from official documents and slowly phased out.
Therefore any complaint about special snowflakes requiring special treatment is not hypocritical.

When referring to a country as a whole, I agree with you. If an individual making the criticism still uses non-metric units and demands someone else switch to metric, that is hypocritical.

English is used by many countries as a cross-country language, and people looking for documentation, manuals and whatever (not necessarily official stuff, I mean blogs, youtube videos and whatever, cooking recipes and even games) will likely search and find more stuff in english than in their own language.

This is also true for most media, English stuff is more common and higher quality than average local stuff.

Fair point, but at the same time, how is learning English as a 2nd language any different than being familiar with both imperial and metric? The only difference is one requires memorization while the other may require some mental calculations. But like I said before, there are tools out there that give you both imperial units and metric, making these scenarios you bring up much more tolerable. Annoying, but tolerable.
If you don't like that example, what about currency? Currency is brought up many times in media (particularly news stories), and when a generic unit like "dollars" or "pesos" is used, it can get pretty confusing. Doesn't matter what country you're from, if the currency is different, most people don't have a solid idea of its value.

More like US citizens live in their own "island" and don't need to interact with outside much, so they don't need to ever convert their units around, so they don't know how fun is to stop reading/watching/playing to convert some unit on Google.

The first part is true, not so much the 2nd part. Americans consuming American media don't need to make conversions, but basically anything outside of that (whether that be sciences, industries, non-American media, etc) will use metric in most cases, with cooking/baking and farming being pretty much the only glaring exceptions. That being said, I figure it isn't uncommon for Americans to pause what they're doing and do a unit conversion, but I don't really know how often anyone does that, let alone Americans.

Then eventually you start knowing both systems enough, but it's still stupid shit that I need to learn 2 systems of measurements because a single nation decides to be an ass and not adopt everyone else's standards.

I completely agree.

[Sniperfox47]

I really wish the W3C would stop trying to overreach and just work with Kronos to bring Vulkan Portability Initiative to WASM, rather than going off on their own and trying to develop a bunch of different custom APIs on their own with no say from hardware vendors...

WebGL-Next is a way better long term option than any of the GPU web projects (Apple's WebGPU, Mozilla's Obsidian, or Google's NXT), in part because you'll actually wind up with proper driver and hardware support, rather than something hacked together that doesn't really solve any of the issues with WebGL 2.0.

I cannot for the life of me understand how a web technologies organization (the W3C) thinks they're better suited for handling development of a graphics API than a *graphics* standards organization with a ton of experience doing specifically that.

[coder]

How about a SPIR-V in WASM shader storage format?

Superficially, it sounds good. But, was security even a thought when SPIR was designed?

[coder]

I really wish the W3C would stop trying to overreach and just work with Kronos to bring Vulkan Portability Initiative to WASM, rather than going off on their own and trying to develop a bunch of different custom APIs on their own with no say from hardware vendors...

I can only assume Apple is to blame for this.

[name99]

I really wish the W3C would stop trying to overreach and just work with Kronos to bring Vulkan Portability Initiative to WASM, rather than going off on their own and trying to develop a bunch of different custom APIs on their own with no say from hardware vendors...

WebGL-Next is a way better long term option than any of the GPU web projects (Apple's WebGPU, Mozilla's Obsidian, or Google's NXT), in part because you'll actually wind up with proper driver and hardware support, rather than something hacked together that doesn't really solve any of the issues with WebGL 2.0.

I cannot for the life of me understand how a web technologies organization (the W3C) thinks they're better suited for handling development of a graphics API than a *graphics* standards organization with a ton of experience doing specifically that.

"I really wish the W3C would stop trying to overreach and just work with Kronos to bring Vulkan Portability Initiative to WASM, rather than going off on their own and trying to develop a bunch of different custom APIs on their own with no say from hardware vendors..."

Seriously? STRONG the ignorance is with this one!
You do realize that the W3C discussion about this are freely available on the internet?

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-gpu/2017Sep/0015.html

And that the discussion consist mainly of the people who DESIGNED all three of D3D, Vulkan, and Metal, trying to find abstractions that will work across each of their APIs so that no company is disadvantaged. And that, no, the discussion does NOT consist of Apple cackling maniacally and insisting that everybody do things their way.

If you really want to live in a fantasyland of corporate conspiracies and malicious engineers, picking one of the most transparent decision processes on earth as your target is really a rather dumb idea...

[coder]

And that, no, the discussion does NOT consist of Apple cackling maniacally and insisting that everybody do things their way.

It doesn't have to. It just takes Apple's backing, because they're not happy with WebGL for whatever reason. Maybe they feel it's too capable of competing with their native apps, so they're looking to sew some market confusion and slow down adoption by putting another standard out there. I don't know, but Apple has consistently behaved in a way that inspires anything but trust and good faith.

If you really want to live in a fantasyland of corporate conspiracies and malicious engineers, picking one of the most transparent decision processes on earth as your target is really a rather dumb idea...

It's not really the engineers I'm worried about. And just because the process might be transparent doesn't mean the motives are either transparent or pure.

We've got an existence proof of them walking away from OpenCL and creating Metal instead of adopting Vulkan. It's also the lone hold-out of Objective C and originator of Swift. This is not an company about adopting open standards or developing any standards that don't put them at some sort of competitive advantage. So, it should be understandable to view anything they do through a standards body with skepticism. That's all I'm saying.