Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#301

Post by cyphar » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:22 AM UTC

evv wrote: post #130

cyphar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

> When you are Slack Inc and the only differentiator you have is that you are in control of how chat works, why on earth would you switch to a protocol that you don't have full control over? The GP is calling for a slack competitor to launch and gain popularity with the help of an open protocol. Once the pendulum swings back towards openness, Slack would be forced to adopt it to stay relevant. If you value your freed…

The majority of my comment was talking about Matrix, which is an open protocol with free software server/client implementations.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#302

Post by tuxracer » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:26 AM UTC

o- wrote: post #248

Great, I feel like an idiot. I advocated slack, because it granted the freedom to choose a client. Now I helped lock-in others. Suggestions for alternatives, that I could migrate to? The requirements are: mid sized teams, desktop and mobile, all major os. People used web based client, native clients, irc gw, and bots. We need search and archive. Self-hosting is an option.

https://wire.com/

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#303

Post by cyphar » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:27 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #285

dman wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers are fickle beasts, they mutter and keep on using a product until they dont.

yet there's no slack competitor that has "better battery life" or "native apps" as one of its selling points.

Matrix has native clients[1], as well as a weechat plugin.

[1]: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/quaternion.html

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#304

Post by cyphar » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:30 AM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #230

cyphar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

"There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc." How does that translate to superior communication between my coworkers and I? Most of that stuff does not matter to people.

My point was that the protocol is superior to Slack in general. Whether you have a use for those features is a different point -- those features are clearly already useful to quite a few people.

But to answer your question, self-hosting would be useful in making sure that internal communication isn't shared with a third-party. e2e could also be useful (depending on what you work on) if you want to just use the public servers.

Not to mention that you can use Matrix like bog-standard instant messaging (replacing the need for other messaging applications through bridges), where those sorts of features are also useful.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#305

Post by mikekchar » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #291

blindgeek wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this! I happen to be a blind software developer who has had just this sort of experience in years gone by. Web apps mean that you are at the mercy of the developers. Something can work one day and break the next. This is even more true for blind people than it is for the general public. Even if there is accessibility testing, I doubt that it covers my particular toolstack. I'm on Linux. So I'm doubly a niche…

Just curious — how do you effectively program blind? Seems to me like a really difficult problem because coding is about jumping around so quickly and needing to be able to scroll and grok at high speeds. You also have the issue of all kinds of specialized characters that are difficult for any kind of text-to-speech. Are there specialized Braille displays for this kind of stuff? How do you go back and forth between k…

Not the OP and not blind, but I've worked with a blind programmer before. You move your cursor in the code and it reads you the line. The screen readers can be adjusted so that the speed of reading is really fast. To someone who is not used to it, it sounds like gibberish. But it's pretty amazing how fast the speech can be. After that, it depends on the editor. My colleague used vi (this is a long time ago -- before there was a vim) and was at least as productive as me. The main thing is that you have to remember the code.

I've occasionally tried to set up a workable system so that I could program blind. I have vision problems where I get ocular migraines unless I have my system set up with a huge font and very high contrast anyway, so I often think that it would be nice to program without looking at the screen. However, I have yet to get my system set up in any way that works. Accessibility has a long way to go. Every time I've tried to set things up I wonder how a blind person can possibly get to the point where they can even start. It's so frustrating.

Actually if anyone in the know is reading this, I'd appreciate a pointer to the easiest to set up Linux system. I wouldn't mind giving it a try again.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#306

Post by dmoy » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #291

blindgeek wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this! I happen to be a blind software developer who has had just this sort of experience in years gone by. Web apps mean that you are at the mercy of the developers. Something can work one day and break the next. This is even more true for blind people than it is for the general public. Even if there is accessibility testing, I doubt that it covers my particular toolstack. I'm on Linux. So I'm doubly a niche…

Just curious — how do you effectively program blind? Seems to me like a really difficult problem because coding is about jumping around so quickly and needing to be able to scroll and grok at high speeds. You also have the issue of all kinds of specialized characters that are difficult for any kind of text-to-speech. Are there specialized Braille displays for this kind of stuff? How do you go back and forth between k…

> coding is about jumping around so quickly and needing to be able to scroll and grok at high speeds

I mean that might just be how you code, and GP does not code that way...

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#307

Post by ex3ndr » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #70

FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

While i like folks from Matrix i actually tried to integrate my messaging platform with Matrix and failed. Matrix API is sooooo sophisticated, they are doing something to simplify this, but all this at alpha stage and too opinionated to use it universally. Even XMPP is better in terms easy of use without mentioning IRC (that is dumb simple).

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#308

Post by azinman2 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #305

azinman2 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious — how do you effectively program blind? Seems to me like a really difficult problem because coding is about jumping around so quickly and needing to be able to scroll and grok at high speeds. You also have the issue of all kinds of specialized characters that are difficult for any kind of text-to-speech. Are there specialized Braille displays for this kind of stuff? How do you go back and forth between k…

Not the OP and not blind, but I've worked with a blind programmer before. You move your cursor in the code and it reads you the line. The screen readers can be adjusted so that the speed of reading is really fast. To someone who is not used to it, it sounds like gibberish. But it's pretty amazing how fast the speech can be. After that, it depends on the editor. My colleague used vi (this is a long time ago -- before…

But how does it sanely pronounce things with abbreviations or even something like:

NSDictionary *myCompoundedWord = @{@“key: [NSNumber numberWithInt: 7] };

And know that it’s missing the terminal “ in the string and has an extra space after the ]?

Seems very difficult. Would be great if it could understand the language enough to verbalize it at a higher level.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#309

Post by xenadu02 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

cma wrote: post #251

pc2g4d wrote: post #8

Of course they do. This is exactly the path Google took. Once you achieve enough power in the market, you can throw open protocols overboard. It's a symptom of the centralized world the internet has become.

It really sucks. Apple did the same: https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2016/8/8/hey-apple-any-pro...

It was not Apple's choice. You should do some reading on the topic.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#310

Post by azinman2 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #306

azinman2 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious — how do you effectively program blind? Seems to me like a really difficult problem because coding is about jumping around so quickly and needing to be able to scroll and grok at high speeds. You also have the issue of all kinds of specialized characters that are difficult for any kind of text-to-speech. Are there specialized Braille displays for this kind of stuff? How do you go back and forth between k…

> coding is about jumping around so quickly and needing to be able to scroll and grok at high speeds I mean that might just be how you code, and GP does not code that way...

If you work on a large production code base, I don’t see how you can’t end up having to search and grok lots of code written by other people...