Mozilla + Intel + Red Hat Form The Bytecode Alliance To Run WebAssembly Everywhere

[bash2bash]

I am sorry but I completely disagree. I believe its impossible to completely obfuscate javascript, these days we have tons of great software to un-obfuscate code and to pretty-print it in a nice and readable output. Nothing is hidden in js.

I also find the wasm "rationale" to be just a bunch of marketing lies, very unconvincing to me as a developer. Essentially, we know they want to hide code, the rest is just a bunch of excuses. I'm glad I can block wasm and many other garbage in firefox and if a website requires it, then I'll just move to a competitor.

[AsuMagic]

Yay more applets for the people! We all get a nice backdoor by Christmas 🤶

Let me introduce you all to the Phoronix point.
A point where a thread shifts into a shitty, low-tier shitpost of a conspiracy theory.
Occurs in about every thread where morons think they can jam in their shitty opinion.

[stormcrow]

You can obfuscate Javascript until it's about as readable as WASM.

You should read https://webassembly.org/docs/rationale/ . It covers why they designed WASM the way they did and why its stack is more debug-able than obfuscated Javascript, Java applets, Flash or whatever.

If Postscript's history proves anything it's that it's next to impossible to satisfy everyone's documentation needs without a Turing complete language. WASM is the most recent attempt at getting things as clean, secure and efficient as possible. I agree there should be something out there for text documents that doesn't have so much crap built-in. Maybe HTML6 or 7 will attempt to do a built-in text fallback or something. But in the context of people wanting forms or to run crap games in their browsers and such, WASM is preferable to Javascript.

You CAN obfuscate, and there's literally more tools out there to DEobfuscate Javascript than there are to obfuscate in the first place. You can be deliberately obtuse in your coding technique, but you can't make it completely unreadable.

As far as Postscript is concerned, we should have learned the lesson it tried to teach us about using an actionable language to create and describe documents as one impossible to get right to begin with. If there's an actionable language with an interpreter designed to manipulate more than just the page lay out, programmers are going to screw it up and leave all kinds of problems with security implications. As it is, we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again then blithely and smugly decry everyone else as incompetent when the inevitable mistakes are made with real world consequences.

Our computer languages, architectures, hardware, and concepts are utterly unprepared for long term robustness against malicious actors and long term data storage. It's long past time we realize that, and no WASM is not a step in that direction. It's just more of the same.

[NotMine999]

Let me introduce you all to the Phoronix point.
A point where a thread shifts into a whining, low-tier Slashdot rant.

TFTFY

[alcalde]

I also find the wasm "rationale" to be just a bunch of marketing lies, very unconvincing to me as a developer. Essentially, we know they want to hide code, the rest is just a bunch of excuses. I'm glad I can block wasm and many other garbage in firefox and if a website requires it, then I'll just move to a competitor.

Nobody wants to hide anything. The benefit is being able to write code for the browser in something better than Javascript. Everyone's going to adopt WebAssembly eventually, the only competitors you'll be able to move onto are those with antiquated software and mountains of technical debt. And then you'll probably be dealing with Internet Explorer and ActiveX plugins. :-(

[alcalde]

javascript is already a gigantic security hole. Browsers must not be allowed to automagically download and execute code, period.

Then we're back to the days of Gopher. The rest of us will not be dragged back into the days of VT-52 terminals.

[NateHubbard]

Let me introduce you all to the Phoronix point.
A point where a thread shifts into a shitty, low-tier shitpost of a conspiracy theory.
Occurs in about every thread where morons think they can jam in their shitty opinion.

Wait, isn't that why we're here in the first place?

[wizard69]

What is really funny here is reading 3-4 articles about the latest Intel exploits and then an article about these partners thinking they have a secure solution for web assembly.

[archsway]

I am sorry but I completely disagree. I believe its impossible to completely obfuscate javascript, these days we have tons of great software to un-obfuscate code and to pretty-print it in a nice and readable output. Nothing is hidden in js.

Okay then, so why don't you give us the link to the Google Docs disassembly you made?

[bachchain]

It seems like most of the comments are about browser wasm, when the article is talking about making a competitor to Node.