Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vector is now called Riot

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#71

Post by kuschku »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #27
cantagi wrote: post #26

> "Riot is more than a messaging app" This said to me "Riot is just a messaging app" and I bounced. I'd recommend changing that tagline to indicate briefly why a user might use Riot instead of Slack or Whatsapp

Riot is based on Matrix. If you scrolled down, it would tell you that it's got strong crypto, you can run your own servers, it's got really good cross-protocol bridges, and a ton of other stuff. And it's totally free, save the cost of running your own server if you choose to do so.

> it's got really good cross-protocol bridges

With that you mean "a worse IRC bridge than Slack"? Every user and dev of IRC clients and servers I’ve talked to in the past weeks has only complained about Matrix’ bridge.

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#72

Post by kuschku »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #28
zokier wrote: post #22

First impressions: - Hmm... sounds a lot like Apache (née Google) Wave - Intro thingy has definite zombo.com vibe (yes, I do realize that I'm getting old..) On a more serious note, this could be really good concept if executed well. Time will tell, I hope for the best.

It's based on the Matrix protocol, which you may have heard of. So, yes, it bears more than a little resemblance to Wave by way of IRC, and was built to fix IRC's problems (lack of identity, poor netsplit tolerance, weak extension support, etc.), and also provide strong capabilities for bridging between protocols, so it doesn't wind up in an xkcd.com/927 type scenario.

> weak extension support

Which definitely doesn’t apply to IRC

> lack of identity

Which the CAP Account extension allows to provide

> strong capabilities for bridging between protocols

And a Matrix-IRC bridge that constantly breaks, doesn’t properly handle private messages, and which badly handles IRC extensions?

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#73

Post by mxuribe »

kuschku wrote: post #70
pomfpomfpomf3 wrote: post #59

Vector (+Matrix) is kinda like self-hosted slack/discord with proper history sync across all your devices, file uploads, nice UI, etc. It's really good. I recommended it to 7 people and every single one liked it, even got 5 of them to set up their own federated homeservers. We're thinking about moving a ~60-people skype group there as well. Only issue I had is Synapse hogging the CPU and getting laggy with a large ro…

Or you could just use IRC with quassel + quassel-webserver, and get basically all of the same, but with an actual open protocol. Which actually has support.

Actually matrix - the protocol upon which vector and now riot depend - is an open protocol; reference here: http://matrix.org/docs/spec/

And then of course, there are the matrix bridges to IRC, etc. Admittedly although i have been using vector clients AND have installed my own personal synapse server, i have no experience using/supporting the various matrix bridges, so can't speak to their quality.

That being said, if you've ever been curious about re-doing some aspects of IRC for the better, you might want to take a look at matrix (the protocol), and suggest improvements; we all stand to benefit from your (and the community's) suggestions.

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#74

Post by mxuribe »

genericpseudo wrote: post #68
edem wrote: post #57

Note that there is a very popular game called League of Legends (played by millions) and the company behind it is called Riot. Some people might confuse your brand with their name.

What's more, they have a chat app. Lawyers are going to be all over this.

I guess it could always be renamed to chat riot? ;-)

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#75

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

chriswarbo wrote: post #56
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shrug Matrix actually has a good point about the spec extensions though: if your spec is that minimal, nobody is going to be able to agree on what feature set to support. As a Schemer, I can attest to that. >Absolutely dripping with irony. As is your comment. Matrix made a different set of design tradeoffs, and is a legitimate protocol in its own right. And yet every time it pops up on HN, people complain about how w…

> Matrix actually has a good point about the spec extensions though: if your spec is that minimal, nobody is going to be able to agree on what feature set to support. If that were true, nobody would agree on which Matrix features to support either. What difference would it make if Matrix just-so-happened to be defined as "XMPP, plus the following extensions..."? > As a Schemer, I can attest to that. It's one thing to…

Actually, that's pretty much what Racket did: Racket isn't a superset of Scheme, any more than Clojure is a superset of Common Lisp.

>If that were true, nobody would agree on which Matrix features to support either. What difference would it make if Matrix just-so-happened to be defined as "XMPP, plus the following extensions..."?

because some of Matrix's design decisions are fundamentally different from those of XMPP. also, the reason why everybody agrees about Matrix features is that they have no choice: there's a far larger base standard than there is for XMPP.

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#76

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

kuschku wrote: post #72
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's based on the Matrix protocol, which you may have heard of. So, yes, it bears more than a little resemblance to Wave by way of IRC, and was built to fix IRC's problems (lack of identity, poor netsplit tolerance, weak extension support, etc.), and also provide strong capabilities for bridging between protocols, so it doesn't wind up in an xkcd.com/927 type scenario.

> weak extension support Which definitely doesn’t apply to IRC > lack of identity Which the CAP Account extension allows to provide > strong capabilities for bridging between protocols And a Matrix-IRC bridge that constantly breaks, doesn’t properly handle private messages, and which badly handles IRC extensions?

IRC bots are a hack, and so much is provided by extensions, that there's no guarantee that your client will support basic features.

CAP Account is just that: an extension. It's not inherent to the protocol, and it shows.

And I didn't say the present bridges were perfect yet. The project is still a ways from completion.

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#77

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

kuschku wrote: post #71
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riot is based on Matrix. If you scrolled down, it would tell you that it's got strong crypto, you can run your own servers, it's got really good cross-protocol bridges, and a ton of other stuff. And it's totally free, save the cost of running your own server if you choose to do so.

> it's got really good cross-protocol bridges With that you mean "a worse IRC bridge than Slack"? Every user and dev of IRC clients and servers I’ve talked to in the past weeks has only complained about Matrix’ bridge.

As I said, it's not perfect yet. I should have said good support for cross-protocol bridges.

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#78

Post by kuschku »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #76
kuschku wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weak extension support Which definitely doesn’t apply to IRC > lack of identity Which the CAP Account extension allows to provide > strong capabilities for bridging between protocols And a Matrix-IRC bridge that constantly breaks, doesn’t properly handle private messages, and which badly handles IRC extensions?

IRC bots are a hack, and so much is provided by extensions, that there's no guarantee that your client will support basic features. CAP Account is just that: an extension. It's not inherent to the protocol, and it shows. And I didn't say the present bridges were perfect yet. The project is still a ways from completion.

> It's not inherent to the protocol, and it shows.

IRC extensions are supported by over 90% of clients already, and provide exactly that.

In contrast to XMPP is IRC actually renewing itself in production.

http://IRCv3.net/

EDIT: I can’t answer you right now (you are submitting too fast), so here is my answer inline:

> I’ll show the list of extensions both supported by every modern client, and each of the networks you mentioned:

> freenode: sasl, account-notify, identify-msg, multi-prefix, extended-join

> efnet: multi-prefix

> quakenet: none

> Hackint: invite-notify, cap-notify, chghost, echo-message, userhost-in-names, account-notify, server-time, account-tag, multi-prefix, extended-join, away-notify, tls, sasl

> Snoonet: away-notify, sasl, account-notify, invite-notify, userhost-in-names, multi-prefix, extended-join

> Mozilla: sasl, userhost-in-names, multi-prefix

> EsperNet: away-notify, sasl, account-notify, multi-prefix, extended-join, tls

> Also, support for extensions by server: http://ircv3.net/software/servers.html

> And by client: http://ircv3.net/software/clients.html

> Any more questions?

Re: Vector is now called Riot

#79

Post by mxuribe »

namesbc wrote: post #50
SamWhited wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely; as much as the Matrix people claim they're not doing that by "interoperating with other protocols" they don't seem to understand that it's exactly what they're doing. The existing standards (XMPP) already interop in exactly the same way (gateways/transports), so making another protocol instead of improving the gateway / transport story on an existing one is just silly.

What's the point of HTTP when you can transfer HTML files via FTP?

Leveraging http for file transfer - via, say, web apps - avoids "civilian" (non-techie) users from having to install yet another tool (like ftp client)...though I do agree that browsers shouldn't replace every other tool under the sun. ;-)
Post reply on HN