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Comment by thomashabets2

18 hours ago

Oh that's cool!

I've set off time to blog about getting my broadband RF scanner (connecting to USRP B200 via WebUSB) to work in WASM.

https://rf-survey.habets.se/

It's basically https://blog.habets.se/2026/08/Broadband-RF-scanner-revisite..., but in the browser.

I also have an AX.25 decoder (https://thomashabets.github.io/ruwasm/) and plain old FM receiver (https://cement.retrofitta.se/tmp/rtlsdr-fm/) already. The latter two work with RTL-SDR, also via WebUSB, so no software installs or setup required.

I've been meaning to make a "GNU Radio in the Browser" (well, gnuradio-companion-like) for my RustRadio project to build flowgraphs without coding, but not gotten to it yet.

11 comments

thomashabets2

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alightsoul  17 hours ago

With wasm, I see a future where the browser and thus web technologies are a UI toolkit for a Linux desktop environment. It already is, people hardly use GTK and qt anymore except for desktop environments or embedded like on cars due to performance limitations. It would be cursed to see a browser running within a browser. But then replacing a desktop environment might be the limit of replacing GTK qt and other UI toolkits with web technologies, making it unnecessary and opposite to the reason people use Linux which is performance

  • thomashabets2  17 hours ago

    I agree. Browser APIs don't have as much coverage as native APIs, but I would say that by far most UIs should be in the browser nowadays.

    Quake can run in the browser, so in my opinion so can the likes of Photoshop. Maybe the latest AAA game is a different beast, but that's a tiny edge case.

    Websites instead of apps on mobile is something that basically always sucks, but I don't see the same on desktop.

    Just build your UIs in WASM already. :-)

    > It would be cursed to see a browser running within a browser

    It's been done.

    • necovek  16 hours ago

      > Websites instead of apps on mobile is something that basically always sucks

      I find it's the opposite: on my computer, I want native apps, but on the phone, it is very hard to manage a large collection of single use apps because I do not have a keyboard to quickly navigate between them.

      3 replies →

kruffalon  13 hours ago

Off-topic:

http://retrofitta.se/

retrofitta

Definition

Add (a component or accessory) to something that did not have it when manufactured.

What did you think it meant?

[EoF]

Strålande! Well done :)

"Fitta" is sort of like "cunt" in Swedish & .se is the TLD of Sweden.