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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#321

Post by hedora »

welder wrote: post #267
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…

Besides building accessibility into frontend/React component toolkits, how do we automate testing for accessibility? I've turned on text dictation and tested apps with a blindfold, but that doesn't scale and I'm not even sure if it's how people really use an app without sight.

I’d think regression testing is easier than with a GUI. Just interpose between the app and the screen reader, and check for expected strings in the output.

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

#322

Post by Spivak »

dfabulich wrote: post #132
jonursenbach wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Slack ever really embrace and extend IRC and XMPP though? It always seemed to be some kind of hack to get your messages there to begin with.

The IRC gateway was there to mollify people who said "IRC is better! I refuse to switch!" Slack advocates could say, "Don't worry, you don't have to switch. You can just keep using your IRC client with Slack. Everybody else will have a web UI, which they prefer, and you can keep using Irssi. Everybody wins."

Right, and now that everyone is hooked the loud minority (if we're being honest with ourselves) have to choose between speaking the Slack protocol or losing access to our contacts.

Are we doomed as a community to be surprised every time a company with power squeezes?

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

#323

Post by paulryanrogers »

smilesnd wrote: post #170

I think this just proves slack can no longer do what it was originally made for sending/receiving messages to boost productivity. Their are a ton of articles posted on hackernews discussing how slack turns a productive person into a slave of answering questions on slack. Slack is a distraction now, a glorified way to show your boss and others you are doing stuff while achieving nothing. Them removing these protocols…

Slack's official clients allow the user to control notifications, and therefore when they respond.

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

#324

Post by CaptSpify »

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...

Every submission system has a spam problem. How is email any different?

I'd actually argue that email is one of the better systems, as I can manage and control my whitelist/blacklist myself. It makes things much more functional that way.

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

#325

Post by CaptSpify »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #294
cyphar wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people posting tonnes of GIFs, emojis, and tagging @all on #general isn't spam? I don't disagree that email has a spam problem (though spam filters have gotten quite good in the past 20-30 years), just that spam isn't an email problem.

You can easily choose to be not be a part of that. You do not have that luxury on email.

You know you can filter email based on the content, right?

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

#326

Post by benbristow »

bartread wrote: post #242
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Slack in a Chrome tab committed 3-4 GB. Sounds like they've made improvements. Standalone client and its helpers are sitting on ~800MB committed on my install of High Sierra. Might be worth a shot.

For the love of Pete! It's a frigging IM client: 800MB is absolutely not a reasonable amount of memory for it to be consuming, and I don't care how long your message history is. A big part of why this occurs is Electron. Same with any app that's basically a browser app: memory usage is out of control relative to what the application does. Case in point: https://arcade.ly/games/starcastle/ (disclaimer: I wrote this).…

Use a machine with more RAM then. If your machine doesn't have at least 8GB of RAM then you're doing it wrong.

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

#327

Post by arbie »

Grollicus wrote: post #4

Is Slack the Platform where you can have multiple accounts with the same displayname? A bit surprising to hear them talk about security

I didn't know this was possible. How does it work with SSO authentication? I suppose enterprises can force display names?

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

#330

Post by a_bonobo »

lokedhs wrote: post #261
tannhaeuser wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, what's your concern with Skype? After a hiatus of ten years, I'm using it currently for a customer, and, maybe apart from cheesy emoticons and space inefficiency, so far it has worked well. Am I the only one to like a native (Linux) desktop client with notification integration etc. more than a bloated web/Electron app?

I'm not the original poster, but assuming you're referring to Skype for Business, the main problem with it is that they don't have a Linux client. The only solution on Linux that implements audio, video and screen sharing is Sky ( http://tel.red/ ), and it's incredibly flaky.

Not only is Sky shaky, but it's advertised as 'free as in beer', if you want to talk for more than 2 minutes you have to pay. Everybody wants to talk for more than 2 minutes.
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