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

#621

Post by hvidgaard » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:56 AM UTC

umen wrote: post #607

hvidgaard wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using IRC "on top" is to avoid using the Slack client at all. I can understand that, and Slack would shut down a lot of critics if they made native clients, and a CLI client.

just to be clear when taking about IRC we are talking about mIRC type right ? native client to what ? i'm using their electron client .. what is wrong about it ? ( memory hangy?)

IRC can be any client you want. Not much IRC, but the ability to leverage the hundreds of good IRC clients to use one in your workflow that fits your needs exactly.

The Electron client is a glorified browser and webpage with none of the benefits of a native app, but with all downsides that entails, including using gigabytes of memory for simple chat.

It's a damn chat client that needs to listen to and submit events, and order them into channels. That is it, it shouldn't use much, or feel slow at all.

And then there is the CLI issue. If you want developers to promote your product, then make it good for them. Many developers want to use live in the commandline.

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

#622

Post by def_true_false » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 11:29 AM UTC

_Tev wrote: post #615

cyphar wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do explain the rising usage of Telegram/WhatsApp/Signal, if encryption isn't important to people? I find that most people actually do care about their privacy, but they want it to be made easy for them as well.

I know plenty of people using Whatsapp and no people caring at all about its approach to privacy. I have not heard of those other two platforms outside of privacy-obsessed communities. Are real usage data disproving my anecdata?

AFAIK Telegram has a substantial user base in Russian speaking countries, Iran and cryptocurrrency related communities. Although I think that's mostly thanks to their successful marketing rather than offering any real privacy/security.

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

#623

Post by jmagoon » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #588

jmagoon wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very possible I'm misunderstanding as well, but when you create a room on the Matrix homeserver, the only option you have is to make it so users on another homeserver cannot join that room, which means your only security is other matrix users not knowing your room name. For a small corporate team that wants to pilot a chat program, like in the original comment, the gulf between Slack setting up your own private…

This is indeed a massive misunderstanding: rooms in Matrix can either be publicly joinable by default or be invite-only (just like in IRC). There's also a separate question of whether a room is locked to a given server (i.e. made unfederatable), but this is an extreme measure taken if you know the room will contain stuff you never want to ever leave that server. You can now also create communities to group your compa…

Great, thank you very much for clarifying!

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

#624

Post by c4h8o3del » Thu, Mar 15, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

defined wrote: post #597

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…

I hear you. I worked with two blind systems people for close to 5 years - we were all working remote, so initially I had no idea they were blind - and subsequently learned from them about their struggles and frustrations dealing with shitty or nonexistent accessibility features. And with assistive devices’ drivers that were broken, or not updated since Windows State of the Ark version, or not available on Linux or Ma…

It might be only tangentially related to your point, but there are Slack API-based clients for [emacs][1] and [weechat][2].

So screen-reader usability is still a thing. The fact it's not using a proper standard open protocol is a problem.

[1]: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

[2]: https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack