Conversation

Jarkko Sakkinen

Edited 1 month ago
After having to use Matrix for a while and seeing how bad Slack and Discord are, I wish there was a criminal law that would allow IRC only for IM. Steady performer, zero fucks. #IRC
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I need to visit local museum and go to see the first IRC server and ask for guidance in this misguided world (the first ever is 400 m away from my home door, i.e. living at a holy place).
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I miss the 90s, IRC and Polish hacking groups bombing IRCNet with regular netsplits :-) And who needs security when you have OTR (innovation from 2004).

In software security a protocol built without security is easier to guard than a protocol with "security features". IRC has this right too. I feel that this some annual thing to praise the IRC and hate the world 🤷
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E.g. I get room keys as a security feature. I did read the Matrix spec. But IRL I find myself carrying USB stick from computer to another in order to have anything readable if a room is encrypted. I.e. I can either use recovery key or authorization request to activate a client but it gets you only hafl-way there.

This makes me feel that UX was designed to fit the security features and not other way around. And if you talk to a Matrix cult member they will say to you that you're not getting it.
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@jarkko sadly irc fails if i want to paste a code block to the chat, or any other modern features

I agreee with the matrix security bs though

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@aks The features you described are what I would consider harmful features [1]. In the past there was thing called a meaningful chat history, which could be interpreted and studied years and years after the discussion took place.

IRC is also the only protocol of which raw protocol dump is easily interpretable without help of a machine. XML/JSON protocol dump is waste or human interpreting it manually can be claimed to be a subject to brutal torture :-)

I'm not capable on understanding what is going on in a typical workplace chat overall even for the span of a single day because they are full of videos, code snippets and countless other distraction signals. By any practical means, they are usable only in that moment when the messages are being exchanged. It's literally like having a workplace discussion by using the walls of a public toilet as the main medium for discussion.

IRCv3 adds some of the modern ideas but not at the cost of retainable chat history.

[1] Thanks to Github who created this culture of bad quality. Steady stream of bad and worse chat services such as Slack, Discord and many others followed the lead.
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@aks Not pointing out fingers here, and do not even try to change this madness but at least I have right to complain and whine ;-) Making sure that an open source project somehow linearizes its history of communication is an incredible asset and definitely worth of pursuing for. I would do my job factors worse if e.g. kernel ML archives and lore.kernel.org did not exist. At min once a week I'm looking for some old discussion or similar just to check up on things.

You don't have to do this or make effort on establishing such ecosystem, that is true, but I'd look it also as an competitive advantage to have a documented history of work done.
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@jarkko As a Matrix server admin I would like to take this opportunity to point out that ...

... you're getting it. Apparently you're doing exactly what should work and yet it doesn't. That's indeed sad.

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@troed So the way I think I'm still happier that Matrix is used rather than Slack or other proprietary service. So it is least worst option at least to IRC :-)

Also: having work a lot with cryptography (as an engineer not as mathematician) over the years, I'm sure the standard could be leveled up to provide sane way to exchange room keys.
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