Automattic invests in Matrix • Hacker News Board

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#41

Post by Arathorn » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:21 AM UTC

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 Web & Netscape? At least, this is the pattern we're trying to copy with Matrix & New Vector. (Minus the AOL bit :/)

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#42

Post by ZoomZoomZoom » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:26 AM UTC

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…

Recent update is a huge leap forward, but still, no one understands, why they have to save/remember 3 passwords.

Only my closest family would listen me explaining that there's encryption but there's also authentication, yet only because I force that info upon them while standing over their shoulder, making sure they write down all the recovery keys.

Select few graduated to password managers and know to back the bases up.

It's a struggle, mainly because I'm the only one who cares in this particular social circle, and thus people don't see my concerns as normal.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#43

Post by Arathorn » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:27 AM UTC

bertman wrote: post #20

xondono wrote: post #17

Can someone give the “elevator pitch” of what sets Matrix apart?

Apart from what? Compared to xmpp: Marketing mostly.

From a technical perspective, Matrix & XMPP are about as different as you can get. It's not just a marketing thing.

Matrix is a decentralised encrypted conversation store; where all conversation history gets replicated across all the participating servers/nodes. It's a bit like Git, or NNTP (Usenet) or possibly IMAP, depending on how you squint.

XMPP is a message-passing protocol; where stanzas get passed between servers/nodes. It's a bit like SMTP or SIP.

There are a bunch of other differences philosophically (Matrix is one big monolithic versioned spec; XMPP is a cloud of XEPs, etc) too.

The only similarity in the end is that you can use both to build chat systems (and you can use both to build a bunch of other things too - e.g. IOT use cases).

Another way of thinking of it is SVG versus Canvas. Or OpenGL versus a Scene Graph library (Open Inventor, or whatever that's become now). Sure you can use both to draw pretty pictures, but architecturally they couldn't be more different.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#44

Post by morceauxdebois » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:27 AM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #34

boudin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the main issue is the battery usage of Riot fdroid which is way too high (i don't know if the google play version have the same issue). Last time i tried it was using more than 50% of my battery just by sitting in the background.

is this on Riot or RiotX on Android? All dev in the last year has been on RiotX, which should be an unrecognisably better app and will shortly replace Riot on Android (hopefully end of June).

Completely unrelated but are there any plans for setting a explicit content filter for riot? At the moment on RiotX you only need to scroll down 7 times in the room directory on matrix.org to see rooms dedicated to sexual content. I think it would be beneficial for broader mass adoption.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#45

Post by the_duke » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:27 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #16

We changed the URL from https://matrix.org/blog/2020/05/21/welcoming-automattic-to-m... to an article that gives more background. (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23256180 )

Weird change to me.

The official post is concise and contains all of the important information, while the Techcrunch "article" is mostly just a string of rambling quotes with filler sentences.

Techcrunch has horrible quality in general, and is only accessible in Europe through a basically malicious tracking opt out.

Since when are low effort aggregators preferred over the original source/announcement? The TC article would be just fine as a comment...

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#46

Post by grizzles » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:41 AM UTC

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…

Security/crypto usability has a tragedy of the commons type underinvestment problem. No one does it well. You can have beautiful designs but it's pretty much impossible to monetize them because crypto exists at such a fundamental level, so nothing ever evolves. Exempli gratia, ~10 years of blockchain apps/investment have passed and I still use vim to hand edit my ~/.ssh/known_hosts file.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#47

Post by Boulth » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:56 AM UTC

VC money mixed with open source software again. It didn't end well for Keybase. I hope Matrix has a monetization strategy.

Edit: for people interested there are company docs at https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10873661/filing-h... eg. "25 Mar 2020 Total exemption full accounts" document (2.2) shows a yearly loss of almost 2M pounds.

Edit 2: it seems Matrix people no longer control 50% of their company shares, or I'm reading it wrong: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10873661/persons-...

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#48

Post by olah_1 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:57 AM UTC

> Imagine if every WP site automatically came with its own Matrix room or community? Imagine if all content in WP automatically was published into Matrix as well as the Web?… Imagine there was an excellent Matrix client available as a WordPress plugin for embedding realtime chat into your site?”

I want to imagine it, but I really struggle to. Matrix is just too slow, bloated, and heavy. I cannot even fathom what a snappy experience with Matrix would be like. I look forward to something like this if it happens though!

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#49

Post by ubercow13 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 12:04 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #19

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. Decen…

> Decentralization with multiple competing tools and standards is good as it provides redundancy and opportunities for specialization

Strange argument. This is one of those competing, decentralised standards you are asking for. It’s not clear that fragmentation is better for chat services, even if like you say commercial interests lead to that. Would the web be better if information was spread across 10 competing incompatible versions of http/dns/html/web browser?

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#50

Post by Boulth » Thu, May 21, 2020, 12:14 PM UTC

benparsons wrote: post #26

xondono wrote: post #17

Can someone give the “elevator pitch” of what sets Matrix apart?

Real-time decentralisation is the headline. Matrix allows you to host your own server, federate messages in real-time between servers, and still benefit from end-to-end encryption between multiple client devices. Good place to get started reading: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/introduction

> Matrix allows you to host your own server, federate messages in real-time between servers, and still benefit from end-to-end encryption between multiple client devices.

This sounds like XMPP so nothing new.

What sets the Matrix apart is that they have the money and spend time and effort to get their clients into good shape. The E2E verification is a prime example: looks simple and works well.