Isn’t production JavaScript usually minified/obfuscated to make it hard to read?
Also wasm is actually bytecode, which I believe has a 1:1 conversion into a text-based format called wat.
I agree with your main point though, it’s kinda creepy when you realise just how much we are expected to allow other people’s code to run on our machines.
Its just the symbol The Register uses at the end of an article. Like how some papers use a filled in square.