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The Matrix Trashfire

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Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#151

Post by avtar »

danpalmer wrote: post #14

I've never used Matrix, directly. However I use Beeper all day every day, via their iOS, Android, and macOS clients. Beeper (not the iMessage app, but their previous and continuing multi-network app) is pretty great. I get one consistent UX across all chat networks I use. Sometimes the networks drop out, but rarely due to Beeper issues. Beeper is essentially a Matrix homeserver, plus a bunch of hosted Matrix bridges,…

Curious to try Beeper now. If anyone has a referral code, please reach out. Email address is in my profile.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#152

Post by 1attice »

This feels like a mis-aimed article -- I use Matrix a lot, and Element, while annoying, is only one of many options.

Compare "The IRC trashfire" (an article about the infelicities of Mirc)

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#154

Post by nusl »

Pretty poor post. It highlights some issues, sure, though the author obviously never tried to actually try. Also, they say there's profanity but I don't see any; apparently the word "cyberfurz" is profanity? The author's prejudice is showing.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#155

Post by pixl97 »

brightball wrote: post #123
vallode wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QA is a massively underappreciated position. A QA person that knows when to automate, when to manually test, and how to report and file issues relevant to the project can save a significant proportion of hours on a project overall. I wish many more companies included budget for QA, it saves developers a lot of time. A bit of a side-note: this sort of analysis is a great answer to "I want to contribute to open source,…

Good QA people are hard to find and it's a weird balance to strike. I've seen QA get run over by aggressive developers. I've seen QA people who were so good, detailed and provided clear reproduction steps that developers couldn't wait to see them work. I've seen QA people who were completely unwilling to work on efficiency improvements, automation or even testing things in parallel so they became a bottleneck to the…

>Good QA people are hard to find

In general, I'd say that's because it's a position that's shit on.

You're apt to be paid far less than actual dev positions. If you're a QA manager you're always pushed on by upper management to outsource and lower costs. There is none of the prestige of being a "QA 10xer" that you'd see heaped upon a dev in the same position. And I see little training/courses pushed out for QA like is typically seen for dev.

It seems like QA in most companies is a necessary evil that management would take out back and shoot the first moment they could.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#156

Post by upofadown »

hiq wrote: post #148
upofadown wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how you would get the 60 digits from the other person in your clipboard. My point is that users should have the chance to know what they are doing. There seems to be a tendency to deliberately keep them in the dark. A 4 digit code is objectively more usable than a 60 digit code.

If verifying these digits make any sense, that means you already have a trusted channel you rely on to communicate these digits. You would use that trusted channel to transfer these digits. How do you want to communicate them? > A 4 digit code is objectively more usable than a 60 digit code. It's more usable, but that would assume synchronicity (like a TOTP) or something else to be secure, while the 60 digits do not…

Typically people would compare identity numbers over a voice channel. A sort of biometrics. It's been suggested that Signal add a voice channel feature for that purpose[1].

If a system is using a 4 digit number for identity verification, chances are it is something like a PAKE[2]. See OTR's (Off The Record) simplified Socialist Millionaire's Protocol for a practical example that allows the use of any string based on shared knowledge.

[1] https://sequoia-pgp.org/blog/2021/06/28/202106-hey-signal-gr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password-authenticated_key_agr...

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#157

Post by the__alchemist »

It's nice to hear I'm not alone. I use Matrix/Element to chat with Rust embedded devs; I have heard about it in other contexts; generally favorably. In my experience, it is awful, and has been for years. Highlights:

- The verification is a mess (in the article; By the way: Once your account is set up, the verification failures don't go away). It has frequent verification popups and overlays; when I attempt to follow them, various errors occur, and it fails. So, the client nags you to verify, but the verification process is broken.

- The read notification system is broken; most chat groups will show as having unread messages, when there are none. This is possibly related to the thread system, but my results here are inconclusive in regards to the exact nature of the problem, nor the solution.

- Message posting and syncing is unreliable, especially after edits. Some messages will show on the PC program, but not the mobile, and vice versa. Sometimes edits I or someone makes will show up on one client, but not the other.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#158

Post by pixl97 »

MR4D wrote: post #130
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Japanese testers were the best I'd ever seen. They never reported a "NotABug." They could back up every report, and give exact reproduction steps. They found weird, obscure corner cases, and that was by hand (they hated automation tools). They had 3,000-line Excel spreadsheets. If even one of those rows failed, the whole shooting match (like an entire product line) could come to a halt (so that meant they had to…

I worked with NTT Docomo years ago for a short time. First time I ever got to see a CMM Level 5 organization. It was insane. No wonder Japanese cars were so much better than everyone else for so long. If you ever get the chance, take it - you will learn way more about software quality than you thought existed!

>No wonder Japanese cars were so much better

Heh, this reminds me of an episode of Top Gear I was watching years ago about quality of British cars. They said something along the lines of "The manufacture sais 'eh, good enough' the moment the car is able to move under its own power.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#159

Post by gowings97 »

thibaultamartin wrote: post #88
gowings97 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any thoughts on how you might improve this workflow?

For the matrix.org website, we landed https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2179 as a quick fix, but we can do better. I think there are several things we can do improve, and the process should be fairly similar with Element: 1. Refine who the website is for, and what they are coming here for. We need to narrow down who our audiences are, what they want, what they known and don't know, and how we can best ser…

Well stated! I wish you luck (I just donated a bit as well)

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#160

Post by AshamedCaptain »

rglullis wrote: post #120
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't have any problem about claiming interoperability in this context as it is completely orthogonal. You could also claim that not having animated gifs also makes it unusable for 99% of the population (an statement I might even agree with) and it would be irrelevant to interoperability. iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to marry yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms" if anything mo…

> iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to marry yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms" We can be here grandstanding and dismissing other people's choices or we can be pragmatic and find ways to grow the alternative networks to the point where the "mainstream" can no longer ignore it. If you want to continue using XMPP, great. But those that are on Apple are not going to drop their beloved iDe…

> We can be here grandstanding and dismissing other people's choices or we can be pragmatic and find ways to grow the alternative networks to the point where the "mainstream" can no longer ignore it.

I have been trying the pragmatic way for over 30 years and it. simply. doesn't. work. The mainstream will drop privacy, federation, and anything in a heartbeat just because the new network comes with a client which can do animated GIFs. There's simply no way to continuously try to match the race of ever-diminishing-usefulness features and if you even try to point that then someone calls you "dismissive and grandstanding".

The only (possible) way forward is legislation. Carrots do not work.

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