Comment by jefftk
7 hours ago
Providing a web app with edit access to a local directory is really needed for this to be usable. Without that you're constantly managing downloaded files and manually replacing things. I do think this is a case where the File System Access API shines.
> Providing a web app with edit access to a local directory is really needed for this to be usable.
"This" what? sha256sum doesn't need read-write access for even one file to be able to compute a hash, let alone a whole directory. You're ignoring most of my comment, focusing on like 20%, and in so doing, missing (and/or deliberately misframing) 100% of the point.
We're talking about Simon's boosting of https://aifoc.us/the-browser-is-the-sandbox/ which is a prototype of Claude Cowork in the browser. That's what I'm saying needs read-write access.
> https://aifoc.us/the-browser-is-the-sandbox/ which is a prototype of Claude Cowork in the browser
Yup. That's the link, all right—the one we all read and that I'm citing examples from. Thanks for the reminder, I guess: it has been a whole 8 hours since I first looked at it.
What "we" are talking about here, in this subthread, is the fact that "Browsers have had widespread support for processing files" for a long, long time, and that although "Chrome team's new, experimental APIs [...] provide additional capabilities" which are undoubtedly useful for certain programs, they're overkill and don't offer anything new and/or strictly necessary for many, many programs that don't actually need that sort of access—including "A bunch of the applications in the original post [that] fall into this category. You don't need new or novel APIs to be able to hash a file, for example."
Which is to say, we're talking about POLP/POLA. And the point of my comment was to address the very worthwhile matter of POLA violations. But you seem insistent on shutting that discussion down with chatter that looks like it's an on-topic reply or refutation to something, but in reality doesn't actually meaningfully engage with what you're purporting to respond to, or at best comes come across as confused and not particularly attentive.
There are already and will continue to be plenty of opportunities to discuss the acknowledged upsides of the new APIs for the class of programs for which they are strictly necessary. There's a lot of them in this very comment section. It doesn't have to come at the expense of changing the subject in the middle of a different conversation—accompanied by undertones that you're putting some matter to rest.
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