This is just a poetic, very well thought out comment. Nice syntax, too, with the long dash. The only quibble might be the comma outside of the quotations, but that seems to be more of a regional, stylistic thing than a hard-and-fast rule. Also, it might make more sense for there to be "no specific psychological floorin the well of entitlement" rather than the way it is currently worded.
I loved my GNOME desktop in 2005, after I finally got it working after a fresh installation of non-graphical Debian/sarge, and now I want to kill it.
I started working on "Linux on the Web" in 2012 (https://linuxontheweb.org), and it is just now turning into a solid, stable prototype.
I'm trying to finally answer the question of whyChromeOS? That is, what makes the Chrome browser, in itself, the most awesome application (don't call them "webapps"!) delivery and execution system ever devised?
My idea is that the Internet of Things paradigm is going to start allowing people to efficiently iterate on the types of interfaces that people really want to use rather than the types that were forced down our throats with the desktop metaphor of the 80's, where all of the elements are screen-based renderings/virtualizations.
Let's take the example of a widget that opens a garage door. When I was growing up in the 80's, those were only physical buttons on devices that we called garage door openers. I'm quite sure that there are apps now that allow people to open their garage doors by tapping their fingers on things that are rendered as buttons.
My claim is that people would much rather have physical objects (perhaps custom 3d printed in their homes in a matter of minutes or even seconds, one day) that posses an aesthetic that suits their personality, than these smartphony gadgets that seem to be all the rage nowadays (I don't have one, my Chromebook is my only communication device).
I further claim that the "Chrome-iverse" (I include Node.js in there), particularly when people start getting a clue about the WebBluetooth and WebUSB APIs, is by far the best place to be when it comes to being able to build startups based on this idea.
All I'm saying is that the GNOME desktop was a godsend back in its day. Nowadays, the (legacy?) desktop metaphor is more of a curse for those of us who are seriously trying to innovate.
> This situation also poses a big problem for the development of new operating systems.
I am currently developing a new kind of operating system using nothing but web technologies (ie, it is technically a single-page web app). It might not be the same kind of legacy hardware-centric operating system that most techies fret over, as I am just interested in "userland" ideas (ie, what new kinds of applications can we build, using what new kinds of higher-order abstractions). IMO, the kinds of research programs you are thinking of are really, practically speaking, solved problems.
Also, my OS is compatible with POSIX, as it is the first (that I know of) Javascript implementation of IEEE Std. 1003.1 (Shell Command Language).
As individual developers, we really need to start thinking of web browsers as the hardware layer, virtualized as it may be. Just as the scripting languages of the early 90's allowed us all to start thinking at higher levels at the language layer, modern web browsers allow us to start thinking at higher levels at the OS layer.
Cool! Awesome! New MIT grads playing with JS who think "this whole deep learning thing is pretty neat"!
Most "normal" humans -- and application developers -- will just see this as "yet another webapp" running some crazy ass code in a browser tab with no apparent rhyme or reason.
We've gotta stop the insanity! We need regulation! We need: "Linux on the Web" (a web-based OS that I've been developing for the past 5 years, see it here: https://linuxontheweb.org) to start putting this kind of crazy, experimental stuff into actual use.
I'm really not trying to be too much of a jerk, but I've been working on my project for about as long as it takes to get an entire college degree, and I'm going to start needing some help here!
<sarcasm>Haha... LOL... WTF... JS is such a silly scripting language, that ends up in such silly places (web pages, electron apps). I mean, its probably utterly impossible that it will revolutionize the world by taking general computation to the next level via some kind of, I dunno, next generation operating system, like https://linuxontheweb.org !</sarcasm>
Hi, I'm the creator of "Linux on the Web", the next evolution of general computation :)
Unless you can put the [little used] HTML5 FileSystem API into full-effect, by creating a full-blown Unix-like operating system (complete with a desktop environment) that runs inside of a browser tab (ie, is "just" a web page)... so that whatever music files are kept in this browser-sandboxed filesystem become your local music library.
(Yes, this idea is slowly but surely becoming a reality... I'm the creator of a little thing called "Linux on the Web", at https://linuxontheweb.org)
Sorry, IMHO, I just think that "Web Applications" are things that exist primarily on the client (in the JavaScript event loop) rather than on the server (whatever is going on in Docker-land, which I have no concept of as a front-end guy). As such, the "physical web" APIs (WebBluetooth, available in current Chrome; WebUSB, coming in a few short weeks with the release of Chrome 61) are far more interesting ways for me to invest my time than getting into this.
I am, by the way, the creator of a technology called "Linux on the Web", which I've been working on full-time since 2012. You can find it at https://linuxontheweb.org (or failing that, on the project's actual domain: https://linuxontheweb.appspot.com). I'm calling it the world's first implementation of a userland operating system -- as opposed to a kernel/hardware level operating system -- that "installs" extremely efficiently as a web page. It tries, in other words, to be the perfect high-level complement to the all low-level engineering work being done by the developers of ChromeOS.
> My first advice for anyone suffering from JS Fatigue would definitely be to stay aware that you don’t need to know everything.
The reason why I created "Linux on the Web" (https://linuxontheweb.org) is so that I wouldn't have to know any of that mind-numbing framework-y stuff. Plain old JS plus a whole lotta *nix/CLI client side statefulness. The mission is simple: bring general computation back to the client! Viva la client!
When I read "web development" in the title, I thought more along the lines of developing the web, as a singular, cooperative, world-embracing entity, rather than simply building yet another web site that tries to compete with every other using traditional business models.
I am trying to do much of the same kind of work on the client-side, in order to really start putting this kind of stuff to work. My site is called "Linux on the web" (at https://linuxontheweb.org) which I call a "world operating system". The goal is to bring general computation back to the client, in a very big way. On the architectural/systems side, I'm really looking forward to putting WebAssembly+Machine Learning together with hardware APIs like WebBluetooth and WebUSB.
These kind of sites can really help with the content side of things, so very big thanks indeed :)
Can anybody tell me if they can play the game, with a USB gamepad or without? Can anybody break 100,000? My highest score playing this on the site has been around 85,000 (my highest lifetime arcade score is probably around 300,000 or so).
BTW, I actually like hanging out here on the bottom of the comments (I find the people that hang out at the top of popular HN threads to be boring, unoriginal, petty jerks... so please don't vote me up!).
You can play my favorite arcade game ever in a wasm gameboy emulator (credit goes to Ben Smith of Google: https://github.com/binji/binjgb) in a web-based OS I've been working on for 5 years. This is known to work in current Chrome and Firefox. Keyboard game controls: 'w'=up 'a'=left 's'=down 'd'=right '.'=A ','=B space=start enter=select. Also, standard (17 button, 4 axis) USB gamepads should "just work" via plug'n'play.
The argument in the URL is the base64 encoding of an initialization script that is being passed to the desktop environment. Going to the link in current Edge should just open the "Arcade" app, with nothing else happening.
You should be able to drag-n-drop ".gb" or ".nes" ROM game files from your native desktop right onto the Arcade app window, and it should just start playing. You can also just drop them onto the web desktop to save them there, then just double-click them when you want to play. That way, the file is kept in the site's local storage.
I've survived as a solo dev for the past decade by driving cabs, living on the streets (mainly West LA/Santa Monica), dumpster diving, etc, and now its starting to pay off as I conquer the world with a new kind of operating system!!!
I was right there a year or two ago developing portable native client things for my project, Linux on the Web (I was able to get vim and python running).
Projects like that can pioneer a whole lot of new techniques and infrastructure that can be very easily applied to whatever technology is eventually going to win out.
The existence of this project says that JS is supposed to be taken as a very serious programming language now. But what, exactly, is it that is so serious that JS can be used for, which will start making hardcore developer's minds see its unlimited possibilities, as a deeply systematic runtime environment?
A brand new kind of [nearly] POSIX compliant shell can be found here, in a little project called "Linux on the Web" (requires Chrome): https://linuxontheweb.appspot.com
The main JS file that implements it is currently showing less than 6k lines (which doesn't include the lexer/tokenizer, in another file, and adds another couple thousand).
I have seen silly toys in websites that have superficial resemblances to *nix shells, but this one seriously borders on 100% standards compliance. Most users will want to run this command upon system "bootup":
$ import fs
... which loads in a lot of typical filesystem related commands like cp, mv, rm, and less. The command to edit files is:
$ edit file_name.txt
... which you can throw a '-c' flag in order to create a new, empty file at the same time. Alt+s to save edits, Ctrl+x to exit. Several nano key bindings apply.
You can do something like this to see the gui in action:
And yet, no one is ever allowed to say anything like this around here: Google is awesome, Googlers are geniuses, Chrome is an absolute marvel of technological wonder. Mozilla, not so much. Seriously.
I love to be that person that hates on people that hate to be that person.
What I'm trying to say is simple, yet profound.
Mozilla is filled with losers. Literally, Mozilla came out of the ashes of a ridiculous state of affairs in the late '90s called Netscape. Their only contribution anymore is writing documentation.
Google is filled with winners. While everyone was waving their hands around so furiously at Netscape during the dotcom blowup, a mild-mannered young man named Lawrence Page was busy doing it the right way, filled with humility, wonder, and unlimited curiosity.
I can literally smell Mozilla types from a mile away in forums like this.
Nothing to add to this exact topic, I just love all of the cool stuff coming fast and furious out of the pipeline with Chrome. Just as "google" has become a word in its own right to mean "finding information online", I think "chrome" is going to have its own little space in the english lexicon to mean "that piece of software that you use to find information, and do much, much more besides".
The thing I've been working on for the past ~5 years as my addition to the "chrome-iverse" is called "Linux on the Web". It is basically the first ever online Linux distro, which, by the way, this @ebidel character has really helped out with via his work on the FileSystem API.
I am currently trying to do justice to the moral notion of making the world, in itself, more rational. Many people can make this kind of claim, but how does one in fact go about doing it?
The way I see it, the world -- at least the way in which we humans can make sense out if it -- is essentially a function of its own information system; predominantly, the world wide web.
It therefore doesn't take too much of a jump to make the argument that perhaps the best method of making the world better is by way of improving on the current state of affairs in the realm of web development.
To that end, I have been working on a project called "Linux on the Web" for nearly 5 years now.
In the video, I start doing streaming of the actual system at around the 17 minute mark. Before then, you must suffer through some philosophical hand-wavery.
But overall, very, very nice indeed!