Hot take... There is something about programming projects spending 10x (or 1000x) the effort to parallelize execution when everything is still restricted by von Neumann architecture.

This. I don't want your browser engine to use all my cores. I want the rest of my cores to be compiling C++.

It is not really about reserving cores.

Just that - even if you distribute work to a number of cores (that itself limited), you still need to sync the execution. So unless you have some bigger chunks of computation, the performance increase will be very small.

And yes, there are bigger chunks of work when rendering a web page, but that is typically already outside the css engine and can be distributed without having to rewrite the core engine.

But my comments are a bit generic here, so I am open to comments regarding this particular project.

Servo also had some other novel architectural ideas IIRC, not directly related to paralelism, but it's been a while since I was looking into that, I don't remember much.

I want all my software to use all my cores, because I'll have twice as many within 5 years.

Will you though? I like the adage: "We used to write software like hardware will get twice as fast every 2 years. Now we should write software like hardware will get twice as expensive every 2 years."

that's something you, the user, are free to enforce with priorities, pinning, etc.

It's more efficient to use all the cores briefly and go back to whatever background task than have long running mixed load. This also matches performance expectations, you generally want the web page displayed _now_ and the compile to finish ASAP while accepting it will take _some_ time.

Assuming it is "briefly" and not indefinitely. See: cloudflare, excessive js, etc.

You're underestimating web developers.

Thanks to the scheduler, you can do both!

I don't really see why they would do that?

Being dependent on a direct competitor is not a comfortable position to be in. It's ameliorated significantly by Chromium being open source, but not completely.

Samsung web browser uses chromium, I doubt they care

Sanctions

Norse Scandinavia must include Iceland. In particular when referencing Prose Edda.

I think of this as a baker at the nascence of bread-baking factories.

Will you operate the bread baking machine, own a bread factory ($++) or make eco-handmade artisan bread ($--).

Or do something completely different? Trade railway shares?

Clearly the answer is to announce that the baking frontier must slow down. ;)

Bread baking factories could clearly destroy civilization as we know it, create incredible economic inequality, make a permanent underclass, etc etc.

I think you need to look beyond the job factor to see the real dangers of AI development.

I think baking bread at scale will give everyone gluten issues.

I am sure your fantasy could stretch further than that, if you allowed it to.

this is a fantastic metaphor. I'm going to borrow it.

> switch to pay-as-you-go app development mode

Still counter productive.

(slackware) Just need to find where you stored all 20 floppy disks...

I think it came with two 3.5" disks, a bootdisk and a rootdisk, as well as two CDs. One was the actual distro, the other a sunsite mirror.

At least that is what I remember and while that memory might be hazy I know exactly where my precious is.

I definitely remember installing it off 20+ floppies onto a 386 back in the day. Most of the disks contained packages and you didn't need to install all of them though.

IIRC Emacs took up a significant number of disks

To be fair, that's pretty much an entire operating system. Just one that lacks its own kernel. It even takes a while to boot up!

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping

Eight Megabytes would be a feature, these days.

Early releases of Slackware were only floppy. The boot/root CD release came later. I fondly recall wasting hours in a computer lab @ university using 20 Sun Sparcstation 2 floppy drives to write the slackware floppies for me and my friend. Walking out with a brick of floppies was pure bliss (achievement unlocked).

You also IPO if your investors want to cash out.

You don't expect to find the global maximum. It will just always be there as an elusive target.

I doubt the human brain is at global maximum.

I don't know, I always feel these companies (including governments) are selling this kind of contracts too cheap.

They are not used to the aggressiveness of FAANG negotiators, they treat them as friends.