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Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

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Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#111

Post by adkadskhj »

Question for anyone in-the-know of Matrix:

I'm toying with using Matrix or IPFS (my two primary interests atm) as a .. P2P layer. Which is to say, i have an app that shuttles thousands of byte chunks between instances of this app, and i need something in that network layer to do the shuttling. I of course could just use a centralized SSH server, but Matrix and IPFS both have be interested as alternatives.

With that said, doing this in Matrix would involve sending quite a bit of volume through Matrix. double digit GiBs of data every month in 10KiB chunks.

Would using hosting Matrix be bad for this purpose? I could of course self host, but A: i'd like to support Matrix, and B: if this is kosher i'd rather give Matrix my money, than give a VPS my money.

Does Element Home limit message sizes or message counts? Does it throttle? Caps would be bad for me (potentially), but throttling would be fine. I just don't want to abuse Matrix, and i'd like to support them with money i'm spending in this use case.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#112

Post by crescit_eundo »

jlgaddis wrote: post #105
crescit_eundo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Were you able to set up a fully encrypted TURN server to use with Matrix? Any tips? I wasn't able to succesfully.

Tip: read the "Be precise and informative about your problem" section [0] of the infamous "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" . Actually, I'd suggest reading the entire document when you have time. For now, though, at least have a read of that section (it's short and sweet). [0]: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise

That was a good tip, thanks! :) Will read the document so I can be a better contributor in the future.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#113

Post by HolidayHuckle »

kevincox wrote: post #72
BugWatch wrote: post #47

While I love Matrix and support their mission, this pricing is quite a bit steep, as well as the 5-person limit being too restricting. They will price out large majority of people who actually could/would want to switch.

Keep in mind that this doesn't mean you can only chat with 5 people. You can chat with anyone who uses Matrix. You can only have 5 people with addresses at your server. Basically identical to email hosting with a 5 account limit.

Yep, as you say, you get to chat with anyone in the Matrix ecosystem (or even further afield if you use bridges).

> You can only have 5 people with addresses at your server

Actually, it's better than this. You can technically have as many people / accounts as you like registered on your server, but you're limited to 5 active users by default. Users are considered "active" if they've been logged in to and using your server for more than two days in a given 30 day period.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#114

Post by 177tcca »

3np wrote: post #49
gorgonzolachz wrote: post #15

This seems like a great move forward for Element, looks like this is angling to replace the New Vector offering they had a while back? The pricing is certainly odd, though. For 5 bucks a month I run my own server with almost a dozen folks on it, which requires basically zero maintenance (I can count the number of times I've had to go in and restart it over the past two years on one hand). Double that for a limit of 5…

> You can just enjoy the fact you know you chose someone you trust (us!) with your data. That stood out to me as poorly phrased, as well. They're assuming I trust them. Even if I do/would have, it's a turn-off.

You'd better trust them with your metadata, unless I'm misunderstanding their protocol.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#115

Post by gorgonzolachz »

rkangel wrote: post #78
gorgonzolachz wrote: post #15

This seems like a great move forward for Element, looks like this is angling to replace the New Vector offering they had a while back? The pricing is certainly odd, though. For 5 bucks a month I run my own server with almost a dozen folks on it, which requires basically zero maintenance (I can count the number of times I've had to go in and restart it over the past two years on one hand). Double that for a limit of 5…

> For 5 bucks a month I run my own server with almost a dozen folks on it, which requires basically zero maintenance (I can count the number of times I've had to go in and restart it over the past two years on one hand). Yes, but how much work was it to get set up in the first place? There's a reason that people pay for Wordpress subscriptions, even though you and I can set up static hosting off Gitlab pages (for exa…

Anecdotally, it took me about an afternoon. I realize that I'm more technical than the average person, so setting up the certs and installing the python deps was a breeze because I've done it before; the documentation for the synapse homeserver was also quite good.

I see where you're coming from, but is this offering geared towards people like that? Looks like there's a significant push to get people who've had their own servers running to adopt this new service, and Element as a whole is geared towards the techy DIY crowd. I know there have been concerns raised in other threads about its UX problems, and from personal experience most of my friends don't share the same concerns that I do about data security or bootstrapped personal infrastructure.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#117

Post by HolidayHuckle »

decrypt wrote: post #9
1MachineElf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you probably saw in the blog post, the ability to do this is currently only offered via the desktop app, which I do not use. I only use the web interface, the Android app, and a non-Element matrix client. Element said in the blog post that it will add this option to the Android app, and once it does, I will use it and subscribe. Hopefully that answers your question.

Accounts on their Element Home plan can work on Android and iOS apps too. It's just that copying over data from a different homeserver to this new homeserver is possible only on the desktop app at the moment.

As you rightly say, you can use any client for Element Home and the only restriction is that the in-app setup and migration wizard is only available in the Element web clients at the moment (this is now corrected in the blog article).

That said, the Matrix->Matrix migration tools (https://ems.element.io/tools/matrix-migration) can be used outside of the setup flow, to help migrate your existing chats to new accounts. So people can always use those separately from host setup, if needed.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#118

Post by sodality2 »

notyourday wrote: post #108
sodality2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is not a decision for them to make, rather that is a decision for their users to make. At which point the data could be taken and leaked. That would end the company, protocol, and platform forever. >Their inability to understand that the mantra of a company that happen to carry user data is "Shall not lose user's data" means the are not tall enough to take the ride. I think having lost data is better than havin…

> At which point the data could be taken and leaked. That would end the company, protocol, and platform forever. First of all, Could and is are two different things. Second of all, if the protocol and company are so badly designed that "could" is equal to "leaked" then it should be the end of the the protocol and the company. > I think having lost data is better than having it stolen and lost... Not "stolen" vs. "los…

>Not "stolen" vs. "lost" but "possibly stolen" vs. "definitely lost". It is up to a user to establish if they think that "possibly stolen" is worse than "definitely lost"

Not when you are in a critical situation and you don't know if the attacker is exfiltrating data right now.

>Not "stolen" vs. "lost" but "possibly stolen" vs. "definitely lost". It is up to a user to establish if they think that "possibly stolen" is worse than "definitely lost"

No, it's "possibly stolen" vs. "lost if you don't have your password and can't log in", because: "No keys were revoked (nor does Element have the power to do so). What happened was that existing user login sessions were destroyed and users had to log in again." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316147

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#119

Post by miloignis »

crazypython wrote: post #97

I have one large concern with this. It's not a FLOSS service, it's SSaaS. Let me explain. While Matrix is open-source, Element Matrix hosting gives you no option to modify the source code, not letting you install add-ons or modifications. There's no way to say, "Hey, check out this cool chat patch, just install it on your homeserver!" With proprietary service, if you want a feature, all you can do is say, "Ugh, I wis…

It's a SaaS offering hosting for FOSS. If you want to be able to patch and change and manage the running homeserver, than you're just manually managing the homeserver, which would be self-hosting! Which is a great thing to do, but then there's no point in buying this service, just rent a VPS. The entire point of this service is that they do the management for you - if you would rather do the management yourself, you totally can. People running their own homeserver are very much first-class citizens on the Matrix network, and managing it yourself is cheaper. The extra expense here is entirely to get them to manage it for you, which seems to be the opposite of what you want.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#120

Post by kitkat_new »

ibraheemdev wrote: post #116
pimeys wrote: post #31

Does this include all the bridges? So the users of the instance can combine other platforms to the same app, such as signal, instagram, twitter, whatsapp, irc, telegram and all that?

Is there a whatsapp bridge?

Yes, but it is not being offered as a hosted service atm: https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp https://element.io/element-matrix-store
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