5 ms·

Better everything: Matrix.

by movedx 2y ago

gsich 2y ago
Debatable.
- thiht 2y ago
  It’s not debatable that Matrix is better than IRC. The IRC clients are mostly bad and ugly, and they don’t even implement basic formatting features (bold, italic) in the same way. NickServ sucks. Having to use bouncers to keep track of history sucks, this only makes it a non suitable choice for a chat platform today. Does IRC even support long messages and multi line messages yet? Oh and btw, net split is not acceptable today.
  - AAAAaccountAAAA 2y ago
    Matrix is not better than IRC. It is in some ways much worse. While I get that IRC has not exactly aged well, Matrix' performance and reliability problems are much worse than the very rare netsplits. IRC sucks, but it can be made more or less tolerable with things like IRCCloud or Lounge (or tmux+weehcat if you happen to prefer something like that), but AFAIK nothing can help with the poor performance and the unreliability of Matrix. While Matrix developers have finally acknowledged the problems, they have run out of venture capital, and have hard time getting any funding to fix the protocol, clients and servers.
  - gsich 2y ago
    It is. They might be ugly, but most are fast. It shouldn't take more than 0.1s to display a new tab or channel.
  - daeros 2y ago
    Hahahaha, the lack of features is a feature. All that shit is bloat, no thank you.
    - thiht 2y ago
      Yeah, not having proper nickname ownership beyond the crap NickServ offers is not a feature, it's a gross overlook from a time where we could afford to be naive on the internet. And considering multiline messages as "bloat" is a wild take to be honest.
      - daeros 2y ago
        More "basic formatting features (bold, italic)" No, thanks. If Discord were, you know, open source, The way I compiled it would strip those options out as well as any edits to pure ASCII Smileys.
      - daeros 2y ago
        Why either, when I first went online bandwidth sucks, it still sucks even in the United States today only it sucks more upstream, especially, when in the world of file sharing, everyone hates a leach. Given that, Rich text support is not wanted. I would however like to be able to Share VIDEO Over RCS that's not so tiny. Rich text might not take much bandwidth, but I'm focused right now on removing and DNS sink holing all unwanted packets. Tracking, adverts, etc. So the little bandwidth it takes, yeah sure, but multiply that with everything else that's eating it, and it's another leak to remove.
sham1 2y ago
Matrix has annoying HTTP long polling. That still hasn't been fixed. There's still no officially blessed alternative transport that wouldn't require you to send a request every N seconds just to see if you have a new message. JSON transport is also eh. At least with XMPP one could embed things like rich text easier and in a more "native" way. There's also some shadiness with how for example the reference client Element got a CLA a couple months back, because I guess Element wants to sell the AGPLv3+ code with a proprietary license. Of course one need not use Element or Synapse or whatever, but this kind of action is still something to consider. Matrix is certainly very, very good. But the best? Eh.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Of all the problems, long polling seems like an entirely non issue. What negative experiences would a user face as a result of long polling?
  - sham1 2y ago
    Decreased battery life, because you have to actively keep polling. Either WebSockets or even real TCP sockets would make that a lot better. Also, it means that a server can't really push events at you, especially if they're coming in rapidly, as they might be with a sufficiently active community. Like sure, once you're waiting for the server response for your long poll request, you'll get the data, but between receiving the data and the next time you poll, there's bound to be stuff happening in your chat room that you'll only know about the next time you poll. Of course with that, you wouldn't need to poll for long, but that also causes problems with battery. In contrast WebSockets or even raw, real TCP sockets the server can just push stuff at you.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      Those polls sit suspended for quite a long time. I can’t imagine it moves the needle at all on battery life. Just open reddit and it fires off more network requests than an entire day long polling. The timing also isn’t fixed. It isn’t like you only receive data on the poll interval. The request finalises when data comes in and a new one is created instantly. So I can’t imagine there being more than a second delay for receiving messages which is entirely acceptable for the use case. If nothing is happening, you’d only be making a request every couple of minutes, but in an active chat it’s perfectly capable of making them continuously. And for mobile, it isn’t long polling while the app is closed, it’s using the regular push notifications system.

Better everything: Matrix.

by movedx 2y ago

Better everything: Matrix.

gsich 2y ago

Debatable.

thiht 2y ago
It’s not debatable that Matrix is better than IRC. The IRC clients are mostly bad and ugly, and they don’t even implement basic formatting features (bold, italic) in the same way. NickServ sucks. Having to use bouncers to keep track of history sucks, this only makes it a non suitable choice for a chat platform today. Does IRC even support long messages and multi line messages yet? Oh and btw, net split is not acceptable today.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 2y ago
  Matrix is not better than IRC. It is in some ways much worse. While I get that IRC has not exactly aged well, Matrix' performance and reliability problems are much worse than the very rare netsplits. IRC sucks, but it can be made more or less tolerable with things like IRCCloud or Lounge (or tmux+weehcat if you happen to prefer something like that), but AFAIK nothing can help with the poor performance and the unreliability of Matrix. While Matrix developers have finally acknowledged the problems, they have run out of venture capital, and have hard time getting any funding to fix the protocol, clients and servers.
- gsich 2y ago
  It is. They might be ugly, but most are fast. It shouldn't take more than 0.1s to display a new tab or channel.
- daeros 2y ago
  Hahahaha, the lack of features is a feature. All that shit is bloat, no thank you.
  - thiht 2y ago
    Yeah, not having proper nickname ownership beyond the crap NickServ offers is not a feature, it's a gross overlook from a time where we could afford to be naive on the internet. And considering multiline messages as "bloat" is a wild take to be honest.
    - daeros 2y ago
      More "basic formatting features (bold, italic)" No, thanks. If Discord were, you know, open source, The way I compiled it would strip those options out as well as any edits to pure ASCII Smileys.
    - daeros 2y ago
      Why either, when I first went online bandwidth sucks, it still sucks even in the United States today only it sucks more upstream, especially, when in the world of file sharing, everyone hates a leach. Given that, Rich text support is not wanted. I would however like to be able to Share VIDEO Over RCS that's not so tiny. Rich text might not take much bandwidth, but I'm focused right now on removing and DNS sink holing all unwanted packets. Tracking, adverts, etc. So the little bandwidth it takes, yeah sure, but multiply that with everything else that's eating it, and it's another leak to remove.

sham1 2y ago

Matrix has annoying HTTP long polling. That still hasn't been fixed. There's still no officially blessed alternative transport that wouldn't require you to send a request every N seconds just to see if you have a new message. JSON transport is also eh. At least with XMPP one could embed things like rich text easier and in a more "native" way. There's also some shadiness with how for example the reference client Element got a CLA a couple months back, because I guess Element wants to sell the AGPLv3+ code with a proprietary license. Of course one need not use Element or Synapse or whatever, but this kind of action is still something to consider. Matrix is certainly very, very good. But the best? Eh.

Gigachad 2y ago
Of all the problems, long polling seems like an entirely non issue. What negative experiences would a user face as a result of long polling?
- sham1 2y ago
  Decreased battery life, because you have to actively keep polling. Either WebSockets or even real TCP sockets would make that a lot better. Also, it means that a server can't really push events at you, especially if they're coming in rapidly, as they might be with a sufficiently active community. Like sure, once you're waiting for the server response for your long poll request, you'll get the data, but between receiving the data and the next time you poll, there's bound to be stuff happening in your chat room that you'll only know about the next time you poll. Of course with that, you wouldn't need to poll for long, but that also causes problems with battery. In contrast WebSockets or even raw, real TCP sockets the server can just push stuff at you.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Those polls sit suspended for quite a long time. I can’t imagine it moves the needle at all on battery life. Just open reddit and it fires off more network requests than an entire day long polling. The timing also isn’t fixed. It isn’t like you only receive data on the poll interval. The request finalises when data comes in and a new one is created instantly. So I can’t imagine there being more than a second delay for receiving messages which is entirely acceptable for the use case. If nothing is happening, you’d only be making a request every couple of minutes, but in an active chat it’s perfectly capable of making them continuously. And for mobile, it isn’t long polling while the app is closed, it’s using the regular push notifications system.