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The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

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Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

#41

Post by Arathorn »

saurik wrote: post #8
x0x0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because decentralization doesn't _automatically and inherently_ solve hard problems _merely due to the technology being decentralized_, we should not waste time working on decentralized systems and instead work on and support centralized ones (one would imagine, particularly his) That is an extraordinary mischaracterization of his talk. What he actually says is that decentralization makes many desirable characteris…

He definitely states for each of his points that the people working on decentralized systems are misguided because decentralization doesn't automatically solve these hard problems; and while his thesis is what you state--that solving these problems is easier as a centralized system because you are more agile--other than a few awkward straw positions (many of which I addressed, and which aren't even really arguments b…

> (something the people behind Matrix actually admit in some of their internal talks)

Actually, we've been quite clear publicly that Matrix's initial incarnation didn't try to deal with metadata privacy, e.g. this presentation taken from a 2015 talk at the Jardin Entropique cryptography conference in Rennes: https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%...

The fun thing is these days we've got to the point of building out metadata-preserving federation transports in Matrix (I just spent the Christmas break working on the stuff outlined in https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/dip_p2p_matrix/).

It feels like we (as Matrix) should do a formal response to moxie's "ecosystem is moving" stuff at some point, not least because the original blog post was written in response to me mailing him to consider linking Signal into Matrix :/

Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

#43

Post by cyphar »

hncensorsnonpc wrote: post #40
cyphar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is also the protocol, and there is only one official Signal client for each platform (and Moxie has been incredibly aggressive towards any alternative clients -- threatening trademark lawsuits in some cases, or just blocking the clients from their network). Matrix, on the other hand, is an open protocol which has many clients (of which Riot is the most popular). This would be like calling all of email "GMail"…

The protocol is or at least was called axolotl and wire.com also uses it, they do not require phone, had and have many more features like video chat, desktop client ... How does wire compare to matrix?

The protocol is now called "The Signal Protocol".

> How does wire compare to matrix?

Matrix has most of the same features, but also supports groups much better than Signal-based protocols (a group-wide key is used an regenerated frequently, which amortises the cost of all the peer-to-peer messages required for Axolotl). It's also federated -- which means you can also self-host your own homeserver (very similar to email, but even easier). And Matrix has native support for bridges to other chat systems, allowing you to reduce siloing between chat platforms (you can talk to Slack, IRC, and Matrix users in a single Matrix room completely seamlessly). As far as I know, Wire doesn't do any of those things.

I also think the newest features Matrix has for key exchange (both the emoji-based verification and the new device cross-signing features) are objectively the most intuitive and easy-to-use when compared to any other E2EE chat system. Yes, even better than Signal's UX for key exchange.

Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

#46

Post by waldfee91 »

Ninn wrote: post #17
Glosster wrote: post #16

Why is he saying that email is not encrypted? Isn't it actually encrypted when traveling from server to client? Who uses ports without SSL or TSL anymore?

He is referencing end to end encryption. Google can see Your to/from/subject/metadata headers even if you bother to use gpg

You could encrypt subject, from field and most metadata (some mail servers don't accept garbled from fields though). To field can not be encrypted, but that's the same on Signal (the server needs to know where to deliver the message to).

Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

#47

Post by glogla »

Arathorn wrote: post #41
saurik wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He definitely states for each of his points that the people working on decentralized systems are misguided because decentralization doesn't automatically solve these hard problems; and while his thesis is what you state--that solving these problems is easier as a centralized system because you are more agile--other than a few awkward straw positions (many of which I addressed, and which aren't even really arguments b…

> (something the people behind Matrix actually admit in some of their internal talks) Actually, we've been quite clear publicly that Matrix's initial incarnation didn't try to deal with metadata privacy, e.g. this presentation taken from a 2015 talk at the Jardin Entropique cryptography conference in Rennes: https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%... The fun thing is these days we've got to the p…

> It feels like we (as Matrix) should do a formal response to moxie's "ecosystem is moving" stuff at some point, not least because the original blog post was written in response to me mailing him to consider linking Signal into Matrix :/

Moxie doesn't want to share, does he?

Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

#48

Post by rakoo »

Ninn wrote: post #17
Glosster wrote: post #16

Why is he saying that email is not encrypted? Isn't it actually encrypted when traveling from server to client? Who uses ports without SSL or TSL anymore?

He is referencing end to end encryption. Google can see Your to/from/subject/metadata headers even if you bother to use gpg

PGP alone is no longer sufficient to talk about encryption in emails. The real step up is autocrypt (https://autocrypt.org/) that encrypts almost everything. Unfortunately the way email works it is still possible to know who is talking to who.

Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]

#50

Post by bertman »

bertman wrote: post #29

This talk is basically an elaboration of Moxie's blog post from 2016 with the same name [1]. See also a response to this blog post by Daniel Gultsch, developer of the popular Android XMPP app Conversations [2]. [1] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ [2] https://gultsch.de/objection.html

Backup link because the OP 404'ed: https://berlin-ak.ftp.media.ccc.de/congress/2019/h264-hd/36c...
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