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

#311

Post by Cambridgeport90 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

bramd wrote: post #62

saagarjha wrote: post #11

I'm very disappointed to see that Slack has decided to go the way of every other messaging service and move away from decentralized and standardized protocols towards those that are walled and proprietary. > We are focused on making Slack accessible to all people. Over the past year, we've made great progress in improving both the keyboard and screen reading experiences in Slack. We know many users have been relying…

> Here's a thought: how about you write a native app for each platform? I can guarantee that the hundreds, if not thousands, of engineers working on AppKit and Windows APIs are a lot better at getting this to work than your team. Not just that, but it took them months to implement some (mind you, still not all) features that are useful for blind users that someone already did in a userscript in a few days. So yeah, I…

As a developer community, we need to get to the point where accessibility is not an afterthought, not even something that has to be considered at all; that just is. I'm stating this from experience; I'm blind myself, so I know exactly what is being referred to. My group used to use Slack, and we stopped using it for this very reason. It's not hard to fill out the accessible label field. If it's present in the framework, then it should be taught and enforced.

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

#312

Post by Spivak » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

def_true_false wrote: post #295

evrydayhustling wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of the kind of business problem Slack is solving incredibly well relative to {chat client X}. Slack's not just a Slack client, it's user lifecycle management, tiered administration, a granular permission model for integrated applications, etc etc etc. How you solve those problems impacts and is impacted by the messaging protocol. If Slack is going to keep moving fast on features that matter for bus…

This is an example of the kind of business problem Slack isn't solving at all. Or did they add e2e encryption recently?

The people who pay aren't asking for E2E. They're asking for auditable shared history. We're in a forums of tech nerds, outside of our bubble encryption is pretty low on the feature totem pole.

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

#313

Post by Cambridgeport90 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

ndarilek wrote: post #277

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…

Oh man, makes me so happy to see the accessibility concerns at the top of this thread. I hate Slack so much. Nothing has made me say "is 10 AM too early for a beer?" quite so much as that absolute pile of uselessness. I thought they'd actually improved their accessibility story when my screen reader read various elements as buttons. Later I discovered that, while they'd likely added the correct ARIA role to a , they…

I couldn't agree more!

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

#314

Post by master-litty » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #94

master-litty wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the curious, there's some history to that parrot emoji: http://cultofthepartyparrot.com

I wouldn't call that history. I only encountered a variant of this gif once, on a discord channel having the face of one of the two streamers. This site just shows me a lot of very similar gifs.

Towards the bottom it gives a little background, with links to more information.

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

#315

Post by hedora » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:46 AM UTC

I was about to set up a native xmpp/irc client because “Safari reloaded this tab because it was using too much energy”

sigh Richard Stallman was right. Again.

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

#316

Post by Spivak » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #301

evv wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, but they're not that different. They use their own protocol and their flagship client is a web/electron app.

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

#317

Post by Cambridgeport90 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:47 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…

depending on how our punctuation is set up with any screen reader, the characters in code are read off nicely. And no special Braille Display is needed for this; any normal one will do, then again, Braille displays are a rather wide selection. With the keyboard, we can move back and forth nearly as fast as, if not sometimes faster, than our sighted counterparts.

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

#318

Post by gcb0 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:49 AM UTC

amphibian87 wrote: post #296

Zak wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related, I have to take issue with this: > addressing with user-owned identifiers like phone numbers Phone numbers are owned by telecoms, not users. Sometimes they're transferable between telecoms, but not always. I, in particular travel internationally often and do not maintain phone service in the same country continuously. I've had to change phone numbers with Signal and Whatsapp a couple times now an…

Turn message forwarding off and nothing will happen, I've lent my cell # to broke friends afew times to make a Google Voice account, and have a Voice number myself for Craigslist exchanges, lapses between paying my carrier, etc

you seem to miss the point.

1) get US phone

2) register google voice to US phone

3) stop paying for US phone

4) you can't de-register you US phone, unless you register a new one

5a) if you never sign up for a US phone, anybody can get assigned that number and click "forgot password" on your google voice.

5b) you get a new US phone: go to 2.

that is true for every single service that ties you up to a phone number or that has phone number as recovery option.

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

#319

Post by Spivak » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #235

CaptSpify wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What doesn't work great about email? easy to use, easy to set up, easy to modify, easy to switch which software handles your email both server-side and client-side....

Has a huge spam problem...

That's mostly a client problem than a protocol problem. Any mail client with a workflow for whitelisting contacts would stop spam immediately.

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

#320

Post by Spivak » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

jmagoon wrote: post #199

zaphar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the Matrix riot client: * https://matrix.org/ * https://riot.im/

Love matrix, but the OP just described the big adoption problem. Non-programmer wants to set it up for his company. How do you do that with a matrix server? Slack makes it pretty damn easy for non-techies to get set up and invite people. Matrix currently does not do that.

Like just about any IT service you call your ops team? Slack offers value in being hosted for sure but if you're worried install difficulty then we're in the world of on-prem services. Matrix is easy compared to some paid products I've used.