Kristian Köhntopp, an infrastructure engineer, writes about filesystems, MySQL, Unix, messaging systems like Matrix and other technical topics.
Commenters cite his posts on filesystem history, cache problems and Matrix's shortcomings, and one questions a complaint in his Matrix critique.
For some long term perspective, I liked Kris' blog post "On cache problems, and what they mean for the future" ending with the following passage:
"That challenges the fundamental abstraction of Unix, though, because in Unix everything is a file, which is a linear array of bytes, and is being accessed through a file handle. Now, with Optane persistent data may be no longer behind a file handle, but a special kind of memory, and data does not have to be crystallized into serialized structures before persistence. In fact, the memory may be so fast that we might not have time to do that.
We require a different compute abstraction instead. Which means, when we have it, the result will finally, after five decades, not really Unix any more."
http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/1960-on-cache-problems-and-what-they-mean-for-the-future/
> Why we would we fund Matrix when XMPP and IRC already exists?
A common sentiment I’ve come across, here and other corners of the internet, is dismay that more organizations have been adopting closed communication platforms such as Discord and Slack. These platforms (probably Discord more so) make it easier for online communities to be set up and offer relatively polished user experience compared to Matrix, IRC, or XMPP.
There was a post shared on HN a few weeks ago by a technical user and their onboarding experience with Matrix https://blog.koehntopp.info/2024/02/13/the-matrix-trashfire.html As someone who uses Matrix, I’m hoping they bridge the UX gap sooner than later.
XMPP and IRC are even further away from being viable alternatives.
Not quite a "headfake" but indeed it is all about testing our response. This is called Lean Fascism: http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/255-lean-fascism/ - "Political positions are no longer backed by theory and no longer subject to political discourse and societal control. They are simply being implemented, sometimes even purposefully badly crafted, in order to measure societal reaction"
The reason Signal is successful is because it at least somewhat reliably works, while Matrix is the worst of fiddleware.
https://blog.koehntopp.info/2024/02/13/the-matrix-trashfire.html explains why Matrix is lacking market share, and I think Signal's decision to be aggressively closed is due to a justified fear of becoming that.
This series has been really informative regarding the history of filesystems - when each breakthrough occurred and the historical tradeoffs that were considered at each point.
https://blog.koehntopp.info/2023/05/05/50-years-in-filesystems-1974.html
> https://blog.koehntopp.info/2024/02/13/the-matrix-trashfire.... explains why Matrix is lacking market share
It complains that cyberfurz.chat is a "server with profanity in the name".
...why?