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A comment on Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson. Parent comment

Re:Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history ... by kevingadd on Friday February 28, 2020 @08:45PM (#22448127)
WebAssembly adds new functionality to the browser runtime environment that isn't available to regular JavaScript. It was originally 1:1 with asm.js/JS but that stopped being true relatively quick.
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Re:Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history ... by notriddle on Saturday February 29, 2020 @01:02AM (#22449213)
It's faster. That's literally it. There aren't any new I/O facilities.
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Re:Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history ... by kevingadd on Saturday February 29, 2020 @11:59AM (#22451513)
A few examples of things it adds that are not widely available in JS (if at all, or requiring awkward hacks/hints in JS), off the top of my head:

int64

uint32

popcnt

copysign

reinterpret_cast equivalent (the js hack for this is abysmal)

pthreads

SIMD

AOT compilation

To be fair, it's been a while since I was last one of the authors of the webassembly spec, so I could be missing some things.

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Re:Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history ... by Bombthecat on Sunday March 01, 2020 @02:11AM (#22455605)
Could ads be served with web assembly?
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Re:Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history ... by kevingadd on Sunday March 01, 2020 @03:27AM (#22455803)
Yes, though I don't know if it makes sense to do it for any reason other than hiding from ad blockers.
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Re:Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history ... by Bombthecat on Sunday March 01, 2020 @03:49AM (#22455881)
Well, for some it is the only reason needed...
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