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Automattic invests in Matrix

techcrunch.com

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Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#11

Post by morsch »

TekMol wrote: post #5

Has this ever worked out? 1: A new technology is being worked on by enthusiasts. Nobody knows if it will get mainstream traction or not. 2: A company puts in a siginificant amount of money to accelerate development and marketing. 3: The new technology gains mainstream traction. Two examples I can think of for point 1 are Linux and PHP. I think both grew without money coming in, right?

Those criteria are so vague that they could apply to all technologies; or none of them. What separates a tech from another, who's considered to be a enthusiast and who isn't, what is traction and when is it mainstream, at what point does a pile of money stop being insignificant, ...

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#12

Post by nicoburns »

TekMol wrote: post #5

Has this ever worked out? 1: A new technology is being worked on by enthusiasts. Nobody knows if it will get mainstream traction or not. 2: A company puts in a siginificant amount of money to accelerate development and marketing. 3: The new technology gains mainstream traction. Two examples I can think of for point 1 are Linux and PHP. I think both grew without money coming in, right?

The internet itself?

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#13

Post by brylie »

Arathorn wrote: post #4
tmikaeld wrote: post #2

Good news! Now if only they can figure out how to make Riot usable with Encryption enabled without pulling your hair out every time you enter a room or chat with non-matching keys. While Riot has a lot of features, it is also not easy for new users. I've tried to convert at least 10 persons and none of them use it any more, citing not being able to figure out how to use it or simply not having the time to waste figur…

Have you tried since we relaunched encryption and turned it on by default 2 weeks ago? The UX has completely been rewritten and it should now be transparent - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... . edit: To be clear, we no longer nag whenever there's an unverified login present - and unverified logins should increasingly be a thing of the past anyway given we now have cross-signing and…

I have logged in in the past couple of weeks. While setting up the encryption keys, the UI just hung there for a minute or two with almost no indication what was happening or how far things had progressed. I patiently waited through the process, but am not sure a casual user would know to wait for so long.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#15

Post by Open-Sourcery »

erdii wrote: post #8
Arathorn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried since we relaunched encryption and turned it on by default 2 weeks ago? The UX has completely been rewritten and it should now be transparent - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... . edit: To be clear, we no longer nag whenever there's an unverified login present - and unverified logins should increasingly be a thing of the past anyway given we now have cross-signing and…

Wait... Naive question: shouldn't you, especially in this case, still nag the account owner about his own unverified sessions? What if a bad-actor homeserver slides in a new session to snoop around? BTW: I absolutely love the cross-signing move and riot/matrix in general! :) Thanks for your great work on this!

AFAIK as more and more chats become encrypted (as it is the default for private rooms) then a rogue server operator wont to be able to snoop because they can't decrypt the messages unless you go through the verification process. And this aside, there are are few unobtrusive, but noticeable icons letting you know that you have an unverified session.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#18

Post by Ebenus »

With E2E encryption in place by default is there any real advantage in using Signal instead of Riot client for everyday communication with my friends? Riot desktop app is definitely more polished and customizable, video quality on all of my devices also seems to be a lot better.

Surprisingly the only thing that I am really missing is the ability to use custom sticker packs which got added to Signal a few months ago.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#19

Post by jondubois »

This will not work. There are no incentives for different groups of people to collaborate on a single shared communication standard. The incentive is for entities to keep data to themselves. Also, this standard is too complex and unclear. Complex standards which try to bring together many different technologies under one abstraction never seem to work.

Also, universal standards are not necessarily a good thing. Decentralization with multiple competing tools and standards is good as it provides redundancy and opportunities for specialization.

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