> It claims WebGPU is limited to Browsers. It is, not. WebGPU is available as both a C++ (Dawn) and a Rust (WGPU) library. Both run on Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. It is arguably the most cross platform library. Tons of native projects using both libraries.
I feel like it's important to mention that WebGPU is a unified API on top of whatever is native to the machine (DirectX, Vulkan or Metal).
I completely agree that it shouldn’t be XML. Then again, I worked with Gradle in the past, which is based on Groovy syntax plus DSL. And that didn’t feel good either (though I must admit that I knew less about Gradle than I do about msbuild). Perhaps the problem of designing a good build system is harder than it seems.
You could check out FAKE. It’s pretty popular in the F# community. While not C#, the terser syntax may be beneficial for a build DSL and you still have access to .NET APIs.
But you augment it with tools written in c# which is best of both worlds. Builds are defined declaratively and custom actions are defined in code. Not the horrible hybrid of eg ant or cmake.
I've met teams that strongly prefer Cake [1] and it seems well maintained.
Personally, I think there's too much baby in the MSBuild bathwater unfortunately and too much of the ecosystem is MSBuild to abandon it entirely. That said, I think MSBuild has improved a lot over the last few years. The Sdk-Style .csproj especially has been a great improvement that sanded a lot of rough edges.
Coincidentally, I started to do media server similar to this 3 days ago.
I just want to serve any folder, then be able to download a file and watch videos with a decent video player.
Now I feel like crap seeing how amazing this project is.
If cigarette was banned from the beginning, we would still see people getting mad without much evidence.
The truth is the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer.
Precautionary principle should always prevail.
That's why we just don't go full GMO, and you would still not wait for any proof that "it's harmless".
You also don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full proof that's it's harmless.
Additionally, without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without (if we stick with the cigarette).
TL;DR: You actually need a proof, but it's a proof that it's harmless and not the other way around.
But things like pesticides are being tested and approved first. With the knowledge they were able to get at the time, they were approved. It was only later, when long term and large scale usage of certain pesticides were shown to have a negative impact on the ecosystem that they looked at them again.
Of course, these things don't live in a vacuum; the manufacturers of e.g. pesticides have a vested financial interest in selling their product, because money. They pay for scientific studies in favor of their product, they schmooze (= bribe) with decision makers and politicians, they overwhelm the system, they take their product global and sell it to whoever is buying, etc.
Same with cigarettes or asbestos or lead paint; it's part "we didn't know" because it's long-term effects or the science wasn't there yet, but part "shut up and buy my product" too.
Anyway, proof that it's harmless is not easy to get in certain cases, not when the effects only show up long-term or when the science doesn't yet know how to test. Was science at a point where they could test for the presence and endocrine effects of microplastics in the human body?
This makes sense. If anybody at any point thinks that something might be bad, it should immediately and permanently be prohibited for everyone. We don’t need a mechanism to check this because people are never mistaken or misled, and there is no such thing as a bad actor.
Since the principle should always prevail, it applies to people as well. If anybody thinks that another person could do harm in the future, they should be allowed to kill them in order to protect society from harm.
A system where the only rule is “every person gets to make the rules for everyone else” isn’t the stupidest imaginable thing because
If the precautionary principle should always prevail, then yes, that's what's being said.
In this case, it's difficult to even disentangle what the status quo is. Pornography, this group's bogeyman, is millenia old. Computer games, decades. The combination is a bit novel, but it's also more precedented than these bans.
> I have seen zero evidence that any of these games are harmful
Yeah. I see evidence they're demanded by the people who we're putatively protecting, however. And I see lots of evidence of other harmful things that aren't banned. Herego, why the fuck are we kneejerking on this?
There's probably a fundamental political question underlying a lot of these discussions: do you default to letting people do things or not?
My long-held belief is that there's a certain hubris to saying that you know best for everyone. So I default to letting people do things, since preventing them is exerting power over them. With that framing, you would need evidence that something is harmful if you're going to exert power over other people to prevent them from doing it.
I disagree, the precautionary principle (Chesterton's fence) is heavily overused, often as a bludgeon and for power maintenance.
This is sort of like Jordan Peterson's claim that something is true if it improves evolutionary fit - a claim that seems reasonable on the surface but is rotten nonsense inside.
If you can't actually download a copy of a digital content as a mere file, then you can't really host it and serve it.
You can't host your own Spotify-clone even if you are allowed to listen to songs. However, you can still download music on Bandcamp to feed your Spotify-clone.
You can't host your own your own digital Video Game Store usually because of various DRM, or because it's painful to "export" the content and painful to "import" it back.
Still on the video game side, You can't even backup your game save (at least on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series), it's not because of any copyright infringement or IPs misuse, it's only a way for them to get more online subscription with online game save backup.
There is still a positive side: when it will become impossible to legally own anything, I'm pretty sure some illegal system will enable you to have a massive library of whatever you want at the cost of few clicks and/or a couple of bucks.
I'm saying "positive side" even though it's illegal because I mostly talk about the comfort of having your own local library.
Totally. There's a whole other article somewhere in there about the, "If buying isn't owning than piracy isn't stealing" sentiment online. Thanks for reading!
Exactly. It's a great article, but the depressing part is that there's a very limited catalog of legal media available to use these services with (except for immich, I suppose).
For games, there's GOG. Good luck finding bigger releases.
For music, there's Bandcamp and CDs and vinyl. Fortunately, most albums still release on either one of these.
Audiobookshelf can be used for most podcasts (some do not have a traditional RSS feed and are in some walled garden) and some audio books are available DRM free, but tons of books are Audible exclusives. I'm relatively sure that they also stop authors from publishing e.g. on Royal Road once they're on there.
The same is true for e-books - HumbleBundle and co are great, but good luck finding certain titles. I regret buying a new Kindle, but at least had the foresight to download all my books before they stopped allowing that. Physical books are an option, but that's not an equivalent to en e-book.
I stopped caring about TV shows and movies a long time ago (largely due to the atrocious streaming fragmentation, pricing, and the sheer audacity to include ads in paid plans), but I assume 95% of all shows are exclusive to some streaming giant, too.
I feel like it's important to mention that WebGPU is a unified API on top of whatever is native to the machine (DirectX, Vulkan or Metal).
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