SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Helsinki Times reports that Finland's Minister of Finance suggested during a recent foreign policy speech that Finland and the EU could pursue self-sufficiency in computing, in particular to avoid over dependence on just a handful of companies. She pointed out that this overreliance on said companies has become so severe that company policy has already started to override existing relevant legislation. The topic had earlier been brought up by President Sauli Niinistö. So far, though, not even Russia has made progress in that direction despite over a decade passing since announcing plans.
"Cyber self-sufficiency, in practical terms, could mean having a European operating system and web browser. The EU could also function as a provider of certificates," she envisioned in a foreign and security policy speech in Helsinki on Wednesday, 26 February.
Previously:
Moscow Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday February 28 2020, @05:37AM (3 children)
Make it a generalized document viewer. For steps 3 and 5, why limit the program to just HTML? Instead, make it out of a generic XML engine and then it can potentially handle other formats than (x)HTML, an important one being OpenDocument Format. There are already many web browsers out there, even if only a few engines any more. So if they are going to reinvent the wheel, they could at least invent a better one.
Javascript though? A for point 6 there, I'm disappointed, to say the least possible about it, that it is perceived by some as being part of the web. What on earth is beneficial about running unsigned, unverified programs from random external sites on my computer thus giving them access to my system and network?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 28 2020, @07:20AM
yes, javascript should be limited to UI elements. It is already dangerous that way. The trend is towards javascript frameworks, while I considered that most of my sites do not really need to be rendered by pulling data from a db, i am going json to templates to static html and the site is lightning fast, has no cookies and tracking, and all I need to care for is bugs in the www server which is completely interchangeable anyway.
If I needed a db, I would test the http://gun.eco [gun.eco] database though, it is fascinating. if it works.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @01:58PM
With respect to Javascript, I don't think it's going away on a large scale without an economic revolution. The advertising uses JS to the tune of tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars a year, you won't get that shut down without attacking the industry directly. Google owns Chromium, they sure as hell aren't going to adopt anything that reduces Javascript's power.
Even if JS is bad, I think WebAssembly is interesting. It seems to take the original concept of Java but do it right. Write one, run anywhere, much better sandboxing than the JVM, and from what I understand lower performance overhead than the JVM too (though I could be wrong). And while your C-to-WebAssembly or C++-to-WebAssembly code can still have race conditions and memory leaks, and maybe (it's not clear to me) use-after-free errors, as far as I understand it the WebAssembly runtime protects against buffer overruns and stack smashing.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday February 28 2020, @05:01PM
I don't like the fact that some sites are completely non-functional without it, but that's where we are right now, and Aunt Tillie isn't going to go for a browser that doesn't work on their favorite website. This hypothetical new browser might be able to do a better job of sandboxing it than what's currently out there, but even so there's going to be a tradeoff of things that don't work as a result.
Now I get the argument that those websites are broken by design, but the tools to make those websites work should exist and a setting should exist to break them on purpose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.