What is Chat?

Chat is an asynchronous form of communication using text and images. Some other forms of asynchronous communication include text messages, emails, or letters. In these forms of communication the sender does not know when someone will read or reply to the message. In contract, having a face to face conversation, a phone call, or a video chat are all forms of synchronous communication. In practice the usual time to response for a chat message is shorter than other forms of asynchronous communication.

Chat messages are either sent directly to a person or group of people, also known as a direct message, or to a channel, sometimes called a room. A direct message can only be read by the recipients. A message to a channel can be read by anyone who joins the channel.

Some messages trigger a notification, also known as a ping or @, to users. Typically notifications trigger a noise or vibration along with a pop-up to get a user's attention. In most chat applications a direct message will notify the users that it is sent to. In many chat applications a message containing an @ symbol followed by a username will notify that user. This is useful when you want your message to be seen by everyone in the channel and also want a quick response from the user whose username you pinged.

Many chat applications will also allow you to notify all users in a channel that are online, via @here, all users in a channel, @channel, or all users, @everyone.

A ping in effect makes the reading and the response to the message more synchronous. When someone gets a notification, they're very likely to drop what they are doing to read the message and respond.

Best Practices

Different forms of communication have different sets of best practices. Some of the rules I try to follow and appreciate when chatting are:

1. Only trigger a notification (aka ping, or @) for someone or a group when the message in the notification is
   1. Applicable: it is relevant to that person or all the people in the group being pinged
   2. Actionable: it requires an action or response by the person or group pinged
   3. Time Sensitive: it requires resolution at this very moment
2. Write all that I want to say in one message
   1. Bad: Hello
   2. Good: Hello, I'm having an issue with X. Something seems to be going on with Y.
3. Keep messages concise and to the point
4. Be blunt, but polite

What's the deal with @?

Remember chat is asynchronous.

It is a great way to have a conversation or discussion when not interrupting people is important. With chat people can choose when to read and respond to messages. If something requires their full attention, they can put off checking for new messages until after they are finished or when they need a break from what they are working on.

A notification interrupts those notified and breaks their concentration. This is desirable when the reason for the notification is critical and time sensitive to everyone notified, but if that is not the case, then people will had their time wasted and may be less likely to check a ping quickly in the future. The greater the number of people pinged, the more more time wasted by a bad ping. This is why @here and its siblings are dangerous tools as they have the potential of frustrating many people by having their concentration broken.

Hello

Hello. It's a polite way of starting a conversation. It also contains no information about what the converstation will entail. In chat, if you were to send just "Hello", anyone reading that message would be wondering what you will send next. If no follow up message came quickly they might ask what it was you needed. Another possibility is no one immediately sees that message and you're waiting for a response. Either is not ideal.

Every message should have enough information for people to read and react appropriately. You'd be very confused by a letter or email that just contained "Hello" and chat is no different. Your messages should be polite, but should also have all the information someone needs to respond or follow up.

And That's Chat

Even before the crazy town that is 2020, I've considered chat to be really important. It's been around for 47 years (since Talkomatic in 1973), but only recently has it grown to be such an important part of how people communicate. Hopefully these practices help you to be more effective chatting or help explain why certain chat behaviors can be frustrating.

Thanks and don't @ me :)

Windows Yubikey Setup Guide

1. Install Chocolatey (you could install the following Windows bits yourself, but I found Chocolatey to make things much easier)

2. In a Administrator Powershell run:

   $ choco install -y git gpg4win putty.install
   

   This will install the necessary bits for your Yubikey to work in Windows.

3. In a normal Powershell run:

   $ mkdir $env:APPDATA/gnupg
   $ Add-Content -Path $env:APPDATA/gnupg/gpg-agent.conf -Value "enable-putty-support`r`nenable-ssh-support"
   

4. Import your public GPG key & trust it

   1. If you've put your GPG public key on a public URL and set the URL on your Yubikey:

      $ gpg --card-edit
      fetch
      $ gpg --edit-key YOUR_KEY
      trust
      5
      

   2. If you just have a .asc file as your public key:

      $ gpg --import PATH_TO_ASC
      $ gpg --edit-key YOUR_KEY
      trust
      5
      

   This will make your public key fully trusted by GPG.

5. Setup your Git configuration:

   $ git config --global core.sshcommand 'plink -agent'
   $ git config --global gpg.program "c:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin\gpg.exe"
   $ git config --global user.email "YOUR_EMAIL"
   $ git config --global user.name "YOUR_NAME"
   

   1. if you want to sign all your Git commits:

      $ git config --global user.signingkey YOUR_KEY
      $ git config --global commit.gpgsign true
      

WSL2 Yubikey Setup Guide

To get GPG and to use your Yubikey as your SSH key in WSL2 you'll need to follow the wsl2-ssh-pageant guide. I'll reproduce it here:

WARNING: forwarding Pageant and GPG from Windows to WSL2 means that ANYONE who can SSH into your account in WSL2 can access your GPG key.

1. From within WSL2 Ubuntu:

   $ sudo apt install socat
   

2. Install wsl2-ssh-pageant.exe into WSL2:

   $ wget https://github.com/BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant/releases/download/v1.2.0/wsl2-ssh-pageant.exe -O $HOME/.ssh/wsl2-ssh-pageant.exe
   

3. Make it executable:

   $ chmod +x $HOME/.ssh/wsl2-ssh-pageant.exe
   

4. Add the following to your ~/.profile in WSL2

   1. For SSH to work:

      export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$HOME/.ssh/agent.sock
      ss -a | grep -q $SSH_AUTH_SOCK
      if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
          rm -f $SSH_AUTH_SOCK
          setsid nohup socat UNIX-LISTEN:$SSH_AUTH_SOCK,fork EXEC:$HOME/.ssh/wsl2-ssh-pageant.exe >/dev/null 2>&1 &
      fi
      

   2. For GPG to work:

      export GPG_AGENT_SOCK=$HOME/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent
      ss -a | grep -q $GPG_AGENT_SOCK
      if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
          rm -rf $GPG_AGENT_SOCK
          setsid nohup socat UNIX-LISTEN:$GPG_AGENT_SOCK,fork EXEC:"$HOME/.ssh/wsl2-ssh-pageant.exe --gpg S.gpg-agent" >/dev/null 2>&1 &
      fi
      

5. Add your GPG key to your trusted keys in WSL2 (same as step 4 in the Windows guide but run from within WSL2)

   1. If you've put your GPG public key on a public URL and set the URL on your Yubikey:

      $ gpg --card-edit
      fetch
      $ gpg --edit-key YOUR_KEY
      trust
      5
      

   2. If you just have a .asc file as your public key:

      $ gpg --import PATH_TO_ASC
      $ gpg --edit-key YOUR_KEY
      trust
      5
      

I hope this makes Yubikey and WSL2 easy to use. It's really nice that I don't need to SSH, dual boot, or grab another machine to do development when I'm using my gaming desktop.