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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

#351

Post by tspike »

clintonb wrote: post #219
snuxoll wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? I am absolutely tired of companies taking a giant dump on the experience of desktop applications. If you're going to make a desktop app make a damned desktop app, stop making everybody accept a terrible electron app because "oh no, I have to do extra work" - give me a break. How many companies still maintain native iOS and Android apps? Lots. Qt even feels (mostly) native on GNOME desktops these days, if you can…

I keep hearing bad things about Electron, and have only now bothered to look it up. As a user of Slack, and whatever other applications I happen to use that are based on Electron, I don't care that the application isn't native. Electron is "good enough." I would imagine that 99% of users feel the same way. Feel free to articulate your issues with such apps. So far, no one has really done that in the various comments…

It's slow. It kills your battery. It disregards standard platform idioms.

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

#352

Post by jdeibele »

gcb0 wrote: post #318
amphibian87 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Pay $20 and you get the number permanently. I've set up my kids' soccer club and my son's Cub Scout Pack with voicemail-only numbers. Callers leave a message and a recording and a transcription is forwarded to the appropriate person via email.

I've also read using Google Voice is highly recommended for things that require a voice or text number since it's very difficult to get hold of someone at Google that can be socially engineered. Much easier to scream at somebody at Verizon, etc.

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

#353

Post by noobermin »

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 someone who doesn't use slack, why did we ever move away from chat programs and protocols that worked fine? I don't know why I need to use slack, hangouts, discord, etc, that are just reinventing irc and/or the garden variety instant messaging platforms that already exist.

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

#354

Post by rb666 »

noobermin wrote: post #353
bramd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someone who doesn't use slack, why did we ever move away from chat programs and protocols that worked fine? I don't know why I need to use slack, hangouts, discord, etc, that are just reinventing irc and/or the garden variety instant messaging platforms that already exist.

Discord is amazing, there really isn't a good replacement right now. Before that it was a mess/mix of IRC/Skype/Teamspeak/Whatsapp, now you can combine all that in one great client from a company that actually seems to care about its users. It's my favorite monthly Paypal charge!

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

#355

Post by flukus »

saagarjha wrote: post #24
zitterbewegung wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Slack in a browser tab . Their native apps are basically electron tabs. I wonder how many people used xmpp and irc gateways in relation to all of their active users ?

Only Slack can answer that, but considering that Slack is commonly used at many technology companies I'd say that the number is probably reasonably high. I tend to find that software developers tend to have a much lower tolerance for non-native/poorly optimized/proprietary software than most people.

It's not tolerance, it's just that they know who to blame. You're average user is just as likely to blame MS, a virus or their ISP instead of the company making their computer run like a dog.

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

#356

Post by brodock »

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.

rocket.chat is the best alternative

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

#357

Post by epalm »

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…

Here's an example:

https://youtu.be/iWXebEeGwn0

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

#358

Post by mjevans »

oconnor663 wrote: post #77
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…

Moxie Marlinspike has a blog post about why protocols like XMPP aren't good enough to support modern messaging apps. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ XMPP is an example of a federated protocol that advertises itself as a “living standard.” Despite its capacity for protocol “extensions,” however, it’s undeniable that XMPP still largely resembles a synchronous protocol with limited support for rich medi…

If it's not in the baseline spec it isn't going to happen.

It would at least have been nice if the 'extensions' had a required way to be opaquely handled and saved as files so that other tools could use them.

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

#359

Post by SllX »

paulddraper wrote: post #197
AlexandrB wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m sure they are still using phones, and email and face to face communication. Slack's rise continues to baffle me. It's not good or widespread enough to replace email, Skype messenging, SMS or phone calls - so it's yet another thing I have to stay on top of at work. My life would honestly be easier without Slack.

And planes didn't replace boats, trains, or automobiles. Baffling that so many people still use it as yet another mode of transportation.

You are in one mode of transport at a time, but your phone can receive multiple forms of communication at a time. All of them with their own notifications, badge icons, and alert sounds, and behind those, some person demanding your attention and only the most minimal cultural etiquette about when to use which and when, if any etiquette is present and pervasive enough through your social and business circles at all.
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