Broadly three things here:

* disable W504 which seems a bit whacko
* remove a bunch of `as e` expressions from exception handlers that don't use
  them
* use `r""` for strings which include backslashes

Also, we don't use pep8 any more, so we can get rid of the duplicate config
there.

synapse

This is necessary for replicating the data in synapse to be visible to a
separate service because presence and typing notifications aren't stored
in a database so won't be visible to another process.

This API can be used to either get the raw data by requesting the tables
themselves or to just receive notifications for updates by following the
streams meta-stream.

Returns updates for each table requested a JSON array of arrays with a
row for each row in the table.

Each table is prefixed by a header row with the: name of the table,
current stream_id position for the table, number of rows, number of
columns and the names of the columns.
This is followed by the rows that have been added to the server since
the requester last asked.

The API has a timeout and is hooked up to the notifier so that a slave
can long poll for updates.