6 ms·

Don't see this happening scientists are totally happy installing R or Matlab etc. Often a lab even sticks with windows b/c of some drivers for a sensor that onl

Don't see this happening scientists are totally happy installing R or Matlab etc. Often a lab even sticks with windows b/c of some drivers for a sensor that only exists for windows

exe34 3y ago
One thing that I found mind blowing initially was that unbricking my pixel 5 involved simply going to Google's install page for it in Chrome with the usb connected and it reflashed successfully. Of course, there's nothing fundamentally new there, I'm sure Java applets could have done it on a serial port if somebody tried, but it was impressive given how gimped most os-level access is in a browser. So I would imagine you could write just enough webusb code to get new instruments to work that you wouldn't need local apps as a manufacturer.
- jaflo 3y ago
  Flipper Zero firmware can also be flashed that way! Blew my mind in a similar way: https://github.com/flipperdevices/update.flipperzero.one https://github.com/flipperdevices/update.flipperzero.one
- jclulow 3y ago
  > So I would imagine you could write just enough webusb code to get new instruments to work that you wouldn't need local apps as a manufacturer. Yes, delivering device control software in a browser with webusb from a cloud platform will usher in a whole new chapter of keeping people from truly owning the scientific research equipment they have procured!
  - exe34 3y ago
    Which means I'll never ever buy it with my own money! But it'll be cross platform for orgs that decide to invest in them.
- pests 3y ago
  This is the process for the Stadia controller unlocking tool as well.
- crote 3y ago
  The knife cuts both ways, though: webusb / webhid / webmidi allow raw access to physical devices which weren't designed for it, and therefore don't have any protections for it. You're just one nag screen away from having your devices be permanently hacked by some random website. It's quite worrying seeing the Chrome team have such blatant disrespect for basic security. Rather than using an allowlist for known-good devices or using some kind of handshake to validate the device is okay with a certain website talking to it, they use a blocklist to prevent a website from messing with things like keyboards/mice/u2f keys. It's a massive footgun waiting to go off. Firefox refuses to implement those APIs due to security concerns, and until they do a serious design overhaul it'd probably be better if Chrome hid it behind a default-off feature switch too.
  - egberts1 3y ago
    Not to mention how data can be leaked back to the hoster via steady stream of URLs.
  - exe34 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure I did have to give permission for this to work, and my default instinct for such requests is to say no or close the page immediately, unless it's something I actively want, like in this case. I take your point though, I'd prefer that there were a whole other page I had to go to and enable something like this. On the other hand, I've always hated how even something I've written for myself can be hobbled at the alter of security out of religious zeal. At one point you really couldn't access local files, although the orthodoxy has now shifted. I just wish it were easy to just point to a directory and say that's all you're getting, but do whatever you want in there.
piva00 3y ago
From what I see helping some friends not well versed with programming doing their PhDs, FORTRAN still has a lot of penetration with scientists. Lots of climate models are FORTRAN code. Also, through helping them I can see the dire state of scientific code, it's a mess, if departments had the budget to employ 1-2 professional programmers to help them mentor staff it could be extremely helpful for science code to be more easily shared and reasoned about, some of the code I've seen is basically throw away code after the contributors aren't around anymore...
- konradha 3y ago
  There is project bringing Fortran to the browser, though (_using WebAssembly_) https://dev.lfortran.org/ https://dev.lfortran.org/
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  A lot of scientific code is worse than a mess, it outright doesn't work and yields incorrect results, a problem which is then routinely covered up. I've seen this first hand :( The worst part is that universities don't realize how much they don't know. On the rare occasions outsiders notice what's going on they are faced with a wall of baffling excuses and justifications for why so much doesn't work, like "if it didn't crash it must be correct" or "scientists don't need unit tests, we just look at the results and know they are right because we're experts". Academics are happy to pronounce that professional coders can't judge the correctness of their work and do so loudly and publicly. As for money, well departments do have the budgets to hire developers. Science funding is in the high billions in most western countries. The problem is not departmental budgets, it's a social problem. Universities love the practice of spreading money amongst as many professors and tiny departments as possible in order to lay claim to every possible area of human knowledge/experience. Combine that with a culture of low standards and coverups and you've got a recipe for disasters (e.g. invariably critical bug fixes that corrupt data are described as not affecting the final results even when that clearly can't be true).
  - abyssin 3y ago
    I have the same experience in a psychology faculty. I helped a PhD student who was working on some MATLAB code. The amount of code I had to write for something similar as they were doing was orders of magnitude lower, and faster to write. But they spent months hurting their brains and therefor thought they were doing something really smart. There was a lot of micromanagement of clueless researchers, and the consequence is that everything had to be done the exact same way as the more experienced members of the lab did previously. This was the most wasteful work organization I've seen in my life, but there was little awareness of it, compared to other state-subsidized projects.
Tarq0n 3y ago
Enterprise companies have huge issues with installing, securing and maintaining open-source software though. Using browser based tools doesn't really resolve the underlying organizational and competence issues, but at least it lets people do their jobs.

Don't see this happening scientists are totally happy installing R or Matlab etc. Often a lab even sticks with windows b/c of some drivers for a sensor that only exists for windows

exe34 3y ago

One thing that I found mind blowing initially was that unbricking my pixel 5 involved simply going to Google's install page for it in Chrome with the usb connected and it reflashed successfully. Of course, there's nothing fundamentally new there, I'm sure Java applets could have done it on a serial port if somebody tried, but it was impressive given how gimped most os-level access is in a browser. So I would imagine you could write just enough webusb code to get new instruments to work that you wouldn't need local apps as a manufacturer.

jaflo 3y ago
Flipper Zero firmware can also be flashed that way! Blew my mind in a similar way: https://github.com/flipperdevices/update.flipperzero.one https://github.com/flipperdevices/update.flipperzero.one
jclulow 3y ago
> So I would imagine you could write just enough webusb code to get new instruments to work that you wouldn't need local apps as a manufacturer. Yes, delivering device control software in a browser with webusb from a cloud platform will usher in a whole new chapter of keeping people from truly owning the scientific research equipment they have procured!
- exe34 3y ago
  Which means I'll never ever buy it with my own money! But it'll be cross platform for orgs that decide to invest in them.
pests 3y ago
This is the process for the Stadia controller unlocking tool as well.
crote 3y ago
The knife cuts both ways, though: webusb / webhid / webmidi allow raw access to physical devices which weren't designed for it, and therefore don't have any protections for it. You're just one nag screen away from having your devices be permanently hacked by some random website. It's quite worrying seeing the Chrome team have such blatant disrespect for basic security. Rather than using an allowlist for known-good devices or using some kind of handshake to validate the device is okay with a certain website talking to it, they use a blocklist to prevent a website from messing with things like keyboards/mice/u2f keys. It's a massive footgun waiting to go off. Firefox refuses to implement those APIs due to security concerns, and until they do a serious design overhaul it'd probably be better if Chrome hid it behind a default-off feature switch too.
- egberts1 3y ago
  Not to mention how data can be leaked back to the hoster via steady stream of URLs.
- exe34 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure I did have to give permission for this to work, and my default instinct for such requests is to say no or close the page immediately, unless it's something I actively want, like in this case. I take your point though, I'd prefer that there were a whole other page I had to go to and enable something like this. On the other hand, I've always hated how even something I've written for myself can be hobbled at the alter of security out of religious zeal. At one point you really couldn't access local files, although the orthodoxy has now shifted. I just wish it were easy to just point to a directory and say that's all you're getting, but do whatever you want in there.

piva00 3y ago

From what I see helping some friends not well versed with programming doing their PhDs, FORTRAN still has a lot of penetration with scientists. Lots of climate models are FORTRAN code. Also, through helping them I can see the dire state of scientific code, it's a mess, if departments had the budget to employ 1-2 professional programmers to help them mentor staff it could be extremely helpful for science code to be more easily shared and reasoned about, some of the code I've seen is basically throw away code after the contributors aren't around anymore...

konradha 3y ago
There is project bringing Fortran to the browser, though (_using WebAssembly_) https://dev.lfortran.org/ https://dev.lfortran.org/
mike_hearn 3y ago
A lot of scientific code is worse than a mess, it outright doesn't work and yields incorrect results, a problem which is then routinely covered up. I've seen this first hand :( The worst part is that universities don't realize how much they don't know. On the rare occasions outsiders notice what's going on they are faced with a wall of baffling excuses and justifications for why so much doesn't work, like "if it didn't crash it must be correct" or "scientists don't need unit tests, we just look at the results and know they are right because we're experts". Academics are happy to pronounce that professional coders can't judge the correctness of their work and do so loudly and publicly. As for money, well departments do have the budgets to hire developers. Science funding is in the high billions in most western countries. The problem is not departmental budgets, it's a social problem. Universities love the practice of spreading money amongst as many professors and tiny departments as possible in order to lay claim to every possible area of human knowledge/experience. Combine that with a culture of low standards and coverups and you've got a recipe for disasters (e.g. invariably critical bug fixes that corrupt data are described as not affecting the final results even when that clearly can't be true).
- abyssin 3y ago
  I have the same experience in a psychology faculty. I helped a PhD student who was working on some MATLAB code. The amount of code I had to write for something similar as they were doing was orders of magnitude lower, and faster to write. But they spent months hurting their brains and therefor thought they were doing something really smart. There was a lot of micromanagement of clueless researchers, and the consequence is that everything had to be done the exact same way as the more experienced members of the lab did previously. This was the most wasteful work organization I've seen in my life, but there was little awareness of it, compared to other state-subsidized projects.

Tarq0n 3y ago

Enterprise companies have huge issues with installing, securing and maintaining open-source software though. Using browser based tools doesn't really resolve the underlying organizational and competence issues, but at least it lets people do their jobs.