Live data from Hacker News

Automattic invests in Matrix

techcrunch.com

81–90 of 114 posts

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#81
post #48

> 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 sn…

Just want to say this is my experience. I’ve tried a few times to set up a Matrix server and federating with and joining any room that’s larger/has more history is an exercise in frustration. High CPU usage, frequent timeouts. And this is with years between attempts; nothing really seems to have improved. And I’m still getting Matrix-related HTTP requests a month after taking the server down, which is a little annoyi…

Joining big rooms is still slow because you currently have to check the keys of every server in the room before you know whether to trust the events in that room; we're fixing this with MSC1228 (using keys as identifiers so you don't have to separately check the keys).

Once you're in, though, performance has improved 2-3x over the last year, and there's easily 10-100x more improvements to be made one way or another. We're also about to add active/active clustering in Synapse at last, which should make bigger servers zippy.

In terms of receiving traffic after you've torn down the server; this is equivalent to getting people trying to talk SMTP to you on port 25 years after you've taken down your MTA. You can mitigate it by explicitly leaving all the rooms on your server before you tear it down, though; i've just filed a bug at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/7551 to track maintaining a script to do so.

Sorry you've had a crap time so far though :(

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#82
post #18

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.

I think they had more metadata collection than signal mainly due to the design. They were making progress on it however, but I dont know the status of the work.

If you don't have any servers, you don't collect any metadata ;) We're playing with this at https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/dip_p2p_matrix/ and live at https://p2p.riot.im (albeit very alpha)

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#83
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main Matrix.org homeserver is pretty slow because it's usually overloaded: https://matrixservers.anchel.nl/783115140 This is IMO mainly because they've stuck with the main implementation of the homeserver (Synapse) being written in Python. Had they've gone through with developing Dendrite as the main implementation, or perhaps even gone with one written in Rust, all of this would feel much snappier. In a way, Den…

There are a bunch of Dendrites already running serverside on the public network there - it's almost out of alpha. Meanwhile Conduit ( http://conduit.rs/ ) is a new implementation in Rust which is making spectacular progress (it's overtaken Dendrite in some places already). Both of them are unrecognisably snappy, relative to Synapse - even when Synapse isn't completely overloaded.

Conduit looks fantastic, I might start using it and possibly contribute.

On that note, is hosting a git GUI a trend? If I want to contribute I have to sign up. I’d have dozens of logins if projects started doing this.

I wonder if matrix could work as a decentralized git.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#85
post #4
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…

This hasn't helped. There's no way I could recommend Riot to anybody but my most techy friends. As soon as we get the message to "Re-request encryption keys from your other devices" they would be done with it. This is still a problem within the last 2 weeks.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#86
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But keybase still has their server software that people depend on and that isn't open source. Worst that could happen with New Vector is that they stop paying developers to work for the Matrix.org foundation but that would not prevent anyone from continuing to use the existing software

Yeah, we (Matrix) have a fundamentally different model to Keybase. The Matrix.org Foundation ( https://matrix.org/foundation ) is an independent neutral entity that safeguards the protocol and ecosystem, with the mission to protect it from being sabotaged by any actors in the ecosystem ( including New Vector - https://vector.im , the startup founded by the team who created Matrix). Even if New Vector did go evil (e.g…

[deleted]

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of Dendrites already running serverside on the public network there - it's almost out of alpha. Meanwhile Conduit ( http://conduit.rs/ ) is a new implementation in Rust which is making spectacular progress (it's overtaken Dendrite in some places already). Both of them are unrecognisably snappy, relative to Synapse - even when Synapse isn't completely overloaded.

Conduit looks fantastic, I might start using it and possibly contribute. On that note, is hosting a git GUI a trend? If I want to contribute I have to sign up. I’d have dozens of logins if projects started doing this. I wonder if matrix could work as a decentralized git.

You might be interested in https://radicle.xyz/

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#88
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…

This hasn't helped. There's no way I could recommend Riot to anybody but my most techy friends. As soon as we get the message to "Re-request encryption keys from your other devices" they would be done with it. This is still a problem within the last 2 weeks.

well, if you’re seeing undecryptable messages at this point then it’s a bug. please submit bug reports from both sender and receiver so we can jump on it; we are triaging and chasing down each & all to avoid precisely this.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#89
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of Dendrites already running serverside on the public network there - it's almost out of alpha. Meanwhile Conduit ( http://conduit.rs/ ) is a new implementation in Rust which is making spectacular progress (it's overtaken Dendrite in some places already). Both of them are unrecognisably snappy, relative to Synapse - even when Synapse isn't completely overloaded.

Very interesting! I hadn't heard of Conduit before. So, if that's available, why not use Conduit as a candidate for the p2p-matrix? Wouldn't it be a better choice than Dendrite? AFAIK Mozilla is already heavily pushing Rust into the WASM territory so perhaps that would make a lot of sense.

Conduit doesn’t federate yet, but Dendrite does - and Dendrite is working surprisingly well for p2p already. But in future could use Conduit too; it’d probably be way smaller footprint.

Re: Automattic invests in Matrix

#90
post #4
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…

Now that's good news! The old UI code was horrible
Post reply on HN