Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat • Hacker News Board

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#41

Post by Syonyk » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #24

The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this…

The centralized mess of Discord is neither stable, nor reliable, nor lightweight to access, and it's going to bite a lot of communities in the rear end, very hard, at some point down the road. The history of "convenient, free to use tech" like Discord is "Someone buys it and tries to turn a profit, and squeezes the life out of it."

IRC is a "fully mature technology" at this point in the internet. It just works. I believe a number of tech companies keep IRC servers around for the "Everything but TCP/IP has gone down" emergency communications technology.

But it's fine. The filter of IRC is part of what makes it worth it these days to use. It's the anti-Reddit.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#42

Post by jeltz » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

tazjin wrote: post #27

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC is far from dead. My relatively unknown oss work has a channel on libera which is seeing ~100 message per month Also Slack made the same move a couple years ago, first trying to appeal to IRC users at the beginning and then shut it all off when they had everyone else

I wouldn't be surprised if by the time Matrix is cold as ice, IRC will still see activity. Sufficiently simple protocols have some aura of immortality to them, and Matrix is the opposite of that.

As is IRC. IRC is only a simple protocol in an ideal world which no longer exists.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#43

Post by joshsimmons » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

jmbwell wrote: post #14

This seems like an inevitable progression of the de-portaling in July: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/ I wonder whether the July move prompted users to find other ways to connect to Libera.chat besides Matrix, killing usage of the bridge, leading us here. Thanks to those involved for the efforts while they could be sustained!

I suspect many people _did_ find other ways to connect (indeed I fired my IRC Cloud subscription back up...), but that's not what ultimately brought us* to this decision. Really it came down to not having the funds or staff time to maintain and operate it to the level that was needed.

Echoing you, I am likewise really grateful for all the people who worked on it while it was doable!

* Speaking on behalf of the Matrix.org Foundation here as its Managing Director.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#44

Post by progval » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

susam wrote: post #38

progval wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... and sanitize NUL/CR/LF from the prefix (well, display_name) here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... Otherwise you may have a command injection vulnerability similar to what matrix-appservice-irc used to have: https://pktz.fr/matrix/security/2022-appservice-irc-command-... (…

Thank you for taking a close look at the source code and highlighting this issue. > You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes Do you mean splitting on (or sanitising of) carriage returns (CR or 0xD) and newlines (LF or 0xA)? I read your security advisory and as far as I understand, the issue occurs due to improper handling of CR and LF characters. I don't see anything about null bytes there.

Null bytes are not allowed in IRC messages: https://modern.ircdocs.horse/#parameters

Some IRC servers (especially those written in C) may interpret it as a line end, so you would have a similar issue

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#45

Post by rch » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:58 PM UTC

xwowsersx wrote: post #31

What communities are y'all in that are only or primarily on Matrix? I haven't seemed to find myself in any yet, but perhaps I'm missing out

I mostly use it for the Fedwiki and NixOS community channels.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#46

Post by jeltz » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:58 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #41

_8j50 wrote: post #24

The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this…

The centralized mess of Discord is neither stable, nor reliable, nor lightweight to access, and it's going to bite a lot of communities in the rear end, very hard, at some point down the road. The history of "convenient, free to use tech" like Discord is "Someone buys it and tries to turn a profit, and squeezes the life out of it." IRC is a "fully mature technology" at this point in the internet. It just works. I bel…

I agree with the first part but IRC in no way just works. Maybe after all seers and clients support IRCv3, but right now it does not just work.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#47

Post by Syonyk » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:59 PM UTC

diamondfist25 wrote: post #36

On the side note, are there anyone whose only using matrix for all the social media apps bridges? I’ve been mucking away for months trying to integrate all social media apps together, and these bridges are obscure and hard to customize/configure for n00bs. Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1

I run a few bridges. They're certainly a bit arcane to configure, but they mostly work fine once they're up and running. I run my own homeserver, it's not been too much trouble to deal with.

Though I try to move people into the "native Matrix" ecosystem. The bridges are just nice as a transition technology.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#48

Post by anthk » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 10:59 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #24

The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this…

- Discord

- Reliable

Oh, dear fools...

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#49

Post by doublerabbit » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 11:02 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #35

PostOnce wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wizards use IRC, and their apprentices use discord. Some of the most deeply technical people in the world use IRC. Being able to talk to them is a superpower.

Indeed. The only sane place on the internet to get answers to a range of deeply technical questions about modern tech (or, at least, a discussion that will get you closer to the answer) I've found is IRC. It's filled with a lot of "old tech guys who have been doing this forever." And, often enough, that's who you need to make sense of some bit of architectural manual arcana. Discord is awful. It's most of the downsid…

Discord is as if IRC and MSN/Y!M/AIM had an orgy and gave birth to an illegitimate child.

Discord got it right but wrong.

Channels are correct. Image / File sharing is correct

Closed gardens and gimmicks with paid subscriptions is where it falls.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#50

Post by Syonyk » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 11:03 PM UTC

jeltz wrote: post #46

Syonyk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The centralized mess of Discord is neither stable, nor reliable, nor lightweight to access, and it's going to bite a lot of communities in the rear end, very hard, at some point down the road. The history of "convenient, free to use tech" like Discord is "Someone buys it and tries to turn a profit, and squeezes the life out of it." IRC is a "fully mature technology" at this point in the internet. It just works. I bel…

I agree with the first part but IRC in no way just works. Maybe after all seers and clients support IRCv3, but right now it does not just work.

The majority of my life spent on IRC argues "It works just fine, the way it is."

I use a znc bouncer these days because my home ISP is less than reliable some months (I consider "cybering" a channel to be quite rude and try to avoid it at all costs), but I've run that on free tier VM instances before with no trouble, and if you don't have one, it's no big deal for the most part.

I'm connected to about half a dozen servers, some major, some "a dozen user backwaters servers," and it's easily the bulk of my "not with people I know directly" communications, just as it's been for literally the past few decades of my life.