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Riot is now Element

(element.io)
550 points J_tt | 3 comments | 15 Jul 20 07:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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dividedbyzero ◴[15 Jul 20 07:49 UTC] No.23842409[source]▶
That's been long overdue and will hopefully help Matrix make inroads into more conservative organizations; I believe the tech is really promising. It's a definite liability, trying to introduce people to Matrix, when the de-facto default client's name evokes all kinds of unhelpful associations – it doesn't sound like work at all and it does sound like gamers, toys, apparently even like a far-left political organisation. Element should be fine for everyone.
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neiljohnson ◴[15 Jul 20 07:56 UTC] No.23842444[source]▶
Glad you like it, the original idea was to think of Riot in terms of a 'Riot of Colour', though in practice it can be interpreted in lots of different ways.

We think Element has much broader appeal and really like the association with being the smallest indivisible unit.

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choward ◴[15 Jul 20 10:06 UTC] No.23843194[source]▶
I've honestly never heard it used that way. I have no idea what that means. Is it a British thing? I've only ever heard it used one way.
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1. AdmiralGinge ◴[15 Jul 20 10:17 UTC] No.23843270[source]▶
British here, I've definitely heard it used that way but it's not the first thing that comes to mind.
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2. pdabbadabba ◴[15 Jul 20 17:09 UTC] No.23848178[source]▶
American here. It's not just a British thing, but it's definitely not a very common use of the word.

I think "riot of color," however, is just one instance of a particular, positive use of the word "riot." More broadly, "riot" can mean something like "a really fun thing" (as in "Let's hang out with that guy, he's a riot!"). But I'm not surprised that Element/Riot found that this was not the primary association that folks were making.

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3. WorldMaker ◴[15 Jul 20 17:23 UTC] No.23848387[source]▶
In the previous post comments there was an interesting debate on the etymology of the word riot. It's a French borrow in the Middle English era, so its etymology is at best "complicated". The "riot of color" idiom was one of the first written usages in English indeed predating the use of the term for violence, but the French word was "debate/quarrel" so it's hard to rule out that violence or negative connotations weren't always hand in hand in the metaphor underlying "riot of color".