151–160 of 163 posts
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IRC is also a walled garden.
IRC is pretty much the opposite of the definition of a walled garden. Its content is not discoverable by search engines by default, but that is not the definition of a walled garden, which is typically a synonym for closed platforms where you have no choice how to access their content (e.g. being forced to use a specific client software).
So…
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Hey, your project looks interesting, thanks for building and sharing it. One question: are you aware of Jami[1], f.k.a. Ring? If so, how does it compare to Snikket? I see that Snikket requires a server, whereas Jami is P2P. The benefit of a server is probably that messages can be stored centrally and not on each device. But I can see pros and cons of either approach. [1]: https://jami.net/
Hey, thanks! I've been into messaging for quite a long time - network protocols and particularly those involving online communication are among my favourite tech topics :) So yeah, I follow various projects. You're right that there are pros and cons. Obviously, not having to run a server is a big pro for many. However, the first thing to remember when researching messaging solutions - no matter what anyone tells you…
Yeah, there are definite challenges of the P2P architecture. But like you say, Jami seems to have done a good job addressing them.
I looked at Briar, but it has a different focus and is more limited in functionality and less polished than Jami. My use case is text messaging and audio/video calls with a close group of contacts, so Jami and your project look like a better fit. I also considered Matrix/Element/FluffyChat, but the Matrix architecture is confusing, and the clients are underwhelming.
Anyway, good luck with Snikket! If Jami doesn't work out for me, I'll definitely give it a try.
IRC is often romanticized, but after working with its protocol spec, I found it rather unsavory. Its unstructured message format looks like this: :User1 PRIVMSG User2 :Hello, are you receiving this message? While this might look fine at first glance, the lack of more regular structure caused issues. Some messages are easier to parse than others. Each implementation introduced quirks and variations, creating countless…
Nobody in the 80s wanted to pay the overhead of s-exprs when a couple of colons did the job. Bandwidth and memory were limited.
Complaining about IRC in 2024 is bleh, by the way. The protocol is what it is, you've had a long time to get over it and if you were late to the party you need to realize that yes, there are tons of old protocols that are pretty badly designed, welcome to the world. IRC as a way of public chatting (and maybe even more so running a closed chat) is still somehow among the best we have and personally I'd prefer it if Slack, Microsoft Teams and Discord died completely for "Hey, we've set up a place to talk about this work/event/hobby thing!".
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As heavy Discord user, it's nice to see that IRC is still kicking and might be available if/when Discord ZIRP gas runs out.
Just think of all that information, stuck in the walled garden, away from the prying eyes of search engines or any other forms of public discoverability. Just waiting to get flushed down the drain or shoved into the training data of a future round of AI crapware...
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To me, it's slowly become obvious that Matrix was invented because certain people wanted to ride the trendy wave of VC money propping up Slack and friends back in those days. Matrix has been all about superlative marketing and over-promises with little substance and theoretical underpinnings to back it up. The fact that they were spreading FUD and disinformation against XMPP and the alternatives in their early days s…
> red herring I think you meant to say red flag, not red herring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
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IMHO it's expensive and not at all better than IRC, plus it helps kill IRC which was a core part of the public internet, open source culture, etc. I also find it annoying that the creators of slack pretend they invented something original.
Sounds like a good product if people are willing to pay so much for it...
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To me, it's slowly become obvious that Matrix was invented because certain people wanted to ride the trendy wave of VC money propping up Slack and friends back in those days. Matrix has been all about superlative marketing and over-promises with little substance and theoretical underpinnings to back it up. The fact that they were spreading FUD and disinformation against XMPP and the alternatives in their early days s…
I’ll take the superlative marketing :D If folks are interested seeing the companies currently sinking $ into Matrix by routing $ to the Matrix Foundation, you can see them at https://matrix.org/support . Thankfully it’s not just Element these days, but companies like Thales and Huawei too. That said, there’s still a $ gap in funding. Meanwhile Matrix 2.0 is a genuine pleasure to use, imo. You can see the substance an…
"trust us it's good this time" → (still the very same at its core) → "you are right, we are sorry, but bear with us, is just about to be ready!" → (buzzword is abandoned/releases but doesn't improve things in a meaningful way) → "trust is it's good this time" → …
Matrix 2.0 on the server is all about "sliding sync", which, once you read through the buzzword, is about running the client on the server so it sucks less at fetching history. Even that works super randomly, if it works at all, even on EMS-hosted instances. The rest is the same. On the client-side, Element X is not daily-drivable because of the bugs and missing essential features. Nothing has improved in a year on that front, which is reminiscent of dendrite: dropping it for the sake of salvaging the original hack would surprise nobody at this point.
> I do regret saying that XMPP had fallen behind, 10 years ago
By no means am I saying that XMPP was great 10 years ago (what was back then, really?), but that's a very poor rationale for torpedoing another project by spreading lies about it on your FAQ, especially when that project was working on the problems and eventually came to address them, across a whole ecosystem of clients and server, while Matrix to this day is still poking at the beast wondering how to tame its single-vendor/single-client/single-server complexity.
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To me, it's slowly become obvious that Matrix was invented because certain people wanted to ride the trendy wave of VC money propping up Slack and friends back in those days. Matrix has been all about superlative marketing and over-promises with little substance and theoretical underpinnings to back it up. The fact that they were spreading FUD and disinformation against XMPP and the alternatives in their early days s…
> Matrix has been all about superlative marketing and over-promises with little substance and theoretical underpinnings to back it up. I don't think so. The underpinnings were there, may it be the concepts for E2EE, P2P, Verification, Bridging, decentralized rooms and conferencing, synchronized history, etc. Not everything is production ready let alone finished with perfect UX, but it doesn't lack theoretical underpi…
Let me cut it short: either you think that there's nothing to be said about the current state resolution machinery, and that's an admission that Matrix will never reach its stated goal to become a mainstream decentralized network (because federation at scale just doesn't work with the current status-quo), or you agree with me that something needs to be done (but, like me, could turn impatient that nothing materializes after a decade).
>> The fact that they were spreading FUD and disinformation against XMPP
> In the past, I have experienced it more often vice versa than this way.
I am not challenging your experience, I am talking about what was effectively written about XMPP on the Matrix website. If this was reciprocal as you say, I'd like to be shown where and in which terms XMPP has engaged in disinformation campaigns against Matrix. At least, with the xmpp.org website's history being on github, it should be very easy: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Axsf%2Fxmpp.org%20matrix&t...
>> all of them XMPP services at one point or another of their histories
> histories is an important keyword
If by that you mean that WhatsApp, the single largest chat network to have ever existed, is history, I've got news for you. While we may regret that federation never was a thing with this network, talking about underpinnings, they are still very much versed in XMPP. And that's not an exception. All Android devices depend on XMPP for push notifications, so do every Nintendo switch, and millions of access points, networking and IoT devices. XMPP is all but dead.
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I’ll take the superlative marketing :D If folks are interested seeing the companies currently sinking $ into Matrix by routing $ to the Matrix Foundation, you can see them at https://matrix.org/support . Thankfully it’s not just Element these days, but companies like Thales and Huawei too. That said, there’s still a $ gap in funding. Meanwhile Matrix 2.0 is a genuine pleasure to use, imo. You can see the substance an…
> Meanwhile Matrix 2.0 is a genuine pleasure to use "trust us it's good this time" → (still the very same at its core) → "you are right, we are sorry, but bear with us, is just about to be ready!" → (buzzword is abandoned/releases but doesn't improve things in a meaningful way) → "trust is it's good this time" → … Matrix 2.0 on the server is all about "sliding sync", which, once you read through the buzzword, is abou…
It might be worth considering that whining about Matrix is misdirected anger - it may be better off pointed at the proprietary centralised surveillance capitalism alternatives rather than us…
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> Meanwhile Matrix 2.0 is a genuine pleasure to use "trust us it's good this time" → (still the very same at its core) → "you are right, we are sorry, but bear with us, is just about to be ready!" → (buzzword is abandoned/releases but doesn't improve things in a meaningful way) → "trust is it's good this time" → … Matrix 2.0 on the server is all about "sliding sync", which, once you read through the buzzword, is abou…
I guess the question is whether it’s better to spread objectively and demonstrably false info today (as you are with the completely bogus Matrix 2.0 critique), versus me putting subjective info into a FAQ 10 years ago ;) It might be worth considering that whining about Matrix is misdirected anger - it may be better off pointed at the proprietary centralised surveillance capitalism alternatives rather than us…
Outright denying people's bad experience with Matrix has also been a sad part in Matrix marketing for so long. Unfortunately, I don't have experience with Element X, since my provider doesn't support it yet, so I can't confirm or deny that testimonial, but my exceptations are not high.
> It might be worth considering that whining about Matrix is misdirected anger - it may be better off pointed at the proprietary centralised surveillance capitalism alternatives rather than us…
It's not either or. People are frustrated on the other hand because of the annoying proprietary platforms, but also because there are currently no alternatives to them that one could whole-heartedly recommend as a replacement.